The Majestic 12
by sss979
Summary: Um... It's not really movie OR cartoon based. Just MIB based. LOL How's this: There's a lot to deal with when MIB takes a step forward in their mission statement. Faced with a new partner and old wounds, Agent J is forced to re-evaluate his life.
1. Prologue

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I'm really not trying to make waves here. Promise, I'm not! ;) This was an old piece that I came across a few days ago and after much debate, I decided to post it. But it breaks away from the norm. I was a huge fan of MIB, but not really of the movies or comics or series. It was more the entire concept. This should go up pretty fast, because it's already written. Just… please don't think of this as the movies/series/comic version of J and K. Because if you do, you're probably going to hate me by the time this is done.

Okay. Disclaimer. I don't own MIB. I don't own the names. The characters themselves are original, but I don't want to step on ANYONE's toes and get myself sued! LOL So let's just say I own nothing and leave it at that, shall we?

The rating might go up. Haven't decided how much of this story I want to cut out. I know some of it's gonna go. But if this story suddenly disappears, try looking for it under "R". It won't go any higher than that. This chapter's safe for kids.

This right here is a shameless plea for feedback. PLEASE review!!! Flaming is better than nothing.

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PROLOGUE

JOSHUA:

The bitter cold stung my face. I had no idea how cold it was, but it had long ago dropped below the twenty-degree mark. I drew in a painful breath and looked up at the snow falling from the sky. It was a blanket of white all around me, the innocence of it was ironic. I knew it would claim my life. I had accepted it, long ago. I wouldn't make it until spring. Not on the iced-over streets of Detroit, Michigan. It was only mid-December. There were three more months of this, and I could already feel my body shutting down, giving up the fight, after two weeks. But I didn't care. I wasn't going back.

It was a decision I'd had to make. How badly did I want out? I knew that I should wait until spring before attempting to run away, but I couldn't. And so I determined that I would rather die than wait. I _was _going to die. That didn't scare me, but the thought of never feeling warmth again wretched my insides. How much longer did I have to wait? I welcomed death. I was ready to go. If I had money, and was a little older, I would get a gun and end it now.

I considered the thought of staining the pure, white snow surrounding me with the thick, red pain. Who would find it? Maybe a child, hand-in-hand with their mother. Maybe two lovers, huddled together as they walked through the falling snow. Maybe my father. I smiled at the thought. It was the ultimate slap in the face. I could fight back. No matter how much control he had over me, he could never really have me unconditionally. I still controlled whether I would live or die. And I had made my decision. He could read about it in the morning's paper.

I imagined him staring at the TV, drunk off his ass, with a bottle of beer in his grasp. He would hear some slurred description of an unidentified boy found dead. He might see a picture. Then he would know. He'd throw the can of beer, jump to his feet, and then... I didn't know what he'd do. There was nothing he _could _do. He couldn't punish me if I was dead.

I pulled my knees to my chest and shuddered, my breath coming in a cloud of white fog. I was shivering uncontrollably. Maybe tonight. Maybe it would end tonight. I closed my eyes as a blast of icy air hit the side of my face and burned my skin, stinging like a thousand needles. I turned my face away from it and felt it knot my snow-covered hair.

My eyes flicked over the scene before me. It was quiet, almost 2:00 in the morning. I was sitting in a playground, behind an elementary school, at the top of the slide but faced the wrong way to go down it. A sheet of white prevented me from seeing more than a few feet away from me. Or maybe it was because my eyes didn't want to focus. I had hardly slept since I'd left. How many hours had it been? And what did it really matter? I leaned my head against the ice-cold metal rail and waited for death.

****

AGENT K:

He was exactly where she said he'd be. I had wondered how she knew, in her dying breath, where to find him. I didn't even know she'd _had _a son. But it had been the only thing on her mind as she'd given her last ounce of life to her cause. I looked away. I knew that pain: the thought that you'd left behind things, _people _that needed you. It was more familiar than I cared for it to be.

Once I checked her computer's history, I knew how she'd been able to tell me where he was. She'd been watching him. That also explained why she was so distracted lately. The past few days, she'd been highly emotional. Not surprising if her son was out in the cold, dying. 

He was in the same exact place as he'd been every night for the past week. He sat on top of that slide, completely exposed, like he was waiting to die. He _was _waiting to die. He had to realize that he wasn't going to survive if he didn't find a more sheltered place. For a week, nature had been gracious to him. It never got below twenty-five degrees. But tonight was different. It was already almost five degrees, and the wind was brutal. He wouldn't live until morning.

"Is he there?" the voice in my ear asked.

I leaned against the brick wall of the school building, my hands buried in the pockets of my leather trenchcoat. "Yeah, he's there," I answered.

"How old do you think he is?"

"I dunno," I mumbled into the microphone on my jacket. "Five maybe? He's young."

"What reason would a five-year-old have to run away?"

"What reason would his mother have to ask us to take him in rather than take him back home?"

He said nothing, and I sighed. "Besides, she never said he was a runaway, boss. They might've been homeless and his father died."

"Is that what you think?"

"No."

"Then what do you think happened?"

"I think he's a runaway."

I watched him shake violently, overwhelmed by the cold. "I'm gonna talk to him," I informed. "He won't make it through the night if I don't move now."

"What makes you think he's going to come with you?"

"He'll come."

"You don't know that."

"He'll die if he doesn't."

"Maybe that's his plan."

"I can change the plan," I answered, sure of myself.

"How are you so sure?"

"It's every boy's dream to work for somebody like you, boss," I smiled, well aware that he hated sarcasm.

"He's not working for me until he gets older," he shot back. "And don't you go telling him otherwise."

I pushed off the wall, following the thin trail of stomped down snow that led through the parking lot and to the playground. "I don't think I'm going to have to tell him much of anything," I answered.

I heard nothing but the howling wind as I approached the metal slide with the tiny boy huddled on the top of it. "Hey," I called up to him.

He jumped and threw his hands underneath him, as if he were preparing to run. Then he stopped, frozen. "What are you doin'?" I questioned.

He didn't answer. He didn't move, except for involuntary shudders. "It's kinda cold out here," I mumbled. "And it's late, too."

Being this close to him, I realized he didn't even have a jacket. He was wrapped in an oversized sweatshirt. The shoes he was wearing were huge, a large man's shoes. His long, dark hair was matted and tangled, and his cheeks were sunken into his face. He looked like death personified. "Where are your parents? Aren't they going to be worried about you?"

He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but no sound came out. He turned his face away. "Can you not speak?" I guessed. "Are you mute?"

No reaction. "Why don't you come down?" I suggested. "You look cold."

He remained, unmoving. "If you're lost I can help you get home," I suggested, wondering what kind of reaction that would get.

Nothing. I saw his breath hit the cold air, but was otherwise unsure of his vital signs. I decided to go out on a limb. "You're not lost, are you?" I prodded. "You ran away, right?" He tensed, like a kitten ready to pounce, but didn't look at me. "Is it really worth dying over? Because you won't make it through the..."

All of a sudden, without warning, he leapt from the top of the slide and landed, crouched in the snow. He ran a few steps, but it was futile. The snow was a foot high. He tried though, and I followed him slowly as he lost the shoes and kept going, finally collapsing, face down on the ground.

I approached him carefully and knelt down, pulling my hands out of my pockets. I pulled him up, out of the snow. He was no more than forty, maybe forty-five pounds. I pulled my gloves off and felt for a pulse. He was alive. Barely. "Boss, you there?" I asked.

"Yes, go ahead."

"I've got the boy."


	2. Chapter One

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CHAPTER ONE

SARA:

I stepped out of the school into the bright sunlight, feeling it warm my face. There was a cool breeze, carrying the smell of fall, but it was still warm. I loved this time of year. Unfortunately, it only lasted for a few weeks. Then it would be gone and the air would turn bitter cold. The sun would go into hibernation for the winter months. I sighed, drinking in the perfect weather while it lasted.

I started across the parking lot, kicking leaves aside as groups of teenagers huddled around the cars. The busses had already left. I could've taken one, but I preferred to walk, even though it was over two miles. I crossed the parking lot and started down the long sidewalk that ran next to the football field. I knew the route well. From here, I would pass through a subdivision, walk down a main road, and enter my neighborhood, where all the houses looked the same and even the subtle excitement of the country had been overrun by civilization. It was times like these that I missed my old house, where there had always been something to do. Now I amused myself with books and Internet investigations, perusing through the public library with my best friend, Maygan, in search of the paranormal.

I chuckled at the thought. Paranormal. Sounded like something out of a sci-fi movie. But I wasn't interested in that. I wanted the real, not the fiction. And I found it, if I dug hard enough. I was actually a decent hacker. Maygan was _really _good. That was why we used the library instead of our home computers. We were harder to track this way. 

Our most recent search had led to the discovery of an actual, government-appointed investigative team that had, in 1947, been established to research, prove, and dissect alien activity and technology. We had proof of its existence, not that we had _any_ idea what we were going to _do _with that information. While I was more than fascinated by the prospect of aliens on Earth, and I _did_ believe that there was such a thing, it was an interest I knew I would never be able to pursue beyond some computer hacking and debate discussions. People thought I was crazy, but that was okay. They could think whatever they wanted, I didn't care.

Reaching the end of the long sidewalk, I suddenly felt eyes on me. I glanced behind me, but saw nothing. No one was following me. But I _knew_ someone was watching me. I could feel their eyes burn through me. Maybe it was the years of martial arts training that had developed my sixth sense. Danger? No, not really danger. Just… someone watching me. A chill ran down my spine and I glanced around again, suddenly paranoid. I cast my eyes to the ground as I walked a little faster.

****

AGENT J:

"This is _stupid_, K," I mumbled into my cell phone as she started down the street, picking up her pace as she stepped out onto the road. "She's just a kid."

"And what, precisely, are you?" he replied.

"I'm not 13!"

"No, but you _were_."

"I still say this is stupid," I answered.

"J, this girl hacked into our database last night. She didn't get far enough into it to realize exactly where she was or who she was dealing with, but the fact remains. She could write a detailed paper on the Majestic 12 and she would be on hundred percent accurate in everything she said. No speculation needed. That makes Delta nervous. And I can't say that I blame him."

"So why am _I _here?" I mumbled. "You guys can threaten a lot better than I can."

"We don't want to threaten her, J. We want to hire her."

"Which is why I think you're nuts. Besides, wasn't it her friend who actually got in?"

"Her friend's attitude toward it is different. She's curious, but she doesn't believe in what she's reading. And besides, I don't trust her."

"And what makes you trust this girl?"

"Gut feeling."

I started to follow after the girl, leaving the shelter of the trees. "Well, I trust your instincts, K. But I sure hope this girl is as trustworthy as you seem to think."

"Well, that's what you're there to find out."

"Hey, I've done what you told me to," I snapped, feeling anger brew deep inside of me. "I followed her around, talked to her teachers and her friends, staked out her house and lied to a lot of people in the process. But I do _not _like this girl and I'm _not_ going to pretend that I do."

"Why don't you like her?" he questioned calmly.

"Because I _know_ I'm gonna end up babysitting her, and the thought doesn't appeal to me."

He sighed. "Don't flatter yourself, J," he warned. "You're not even old enough to drink yet."

He hung up on me without saying good-bye and I flipped the phone closed. I wasn't offended at the insult. It was just the way he talked, the way he worked. I'd learned to live with it, and to understand when he was and wasn't mad. And I had only seen him get mad twice in the eleven years I'd known him.

Everybody always treated me like a child. K was usually the only exception. He understood me better than he let on. And I knew he stuck up for me when people talked behind my back. But to my face, he still had a tendency to forget that I wasn't as young as I looked. I looked about 15. In reality, I was almost 19. But then, I'd always looked young. I didn't eat much when I was growing up, and I knew that had a lot to do with it.

The girl glanced over her shoulder and saw me. She kept walking, slowing a little. I replaced the phone in the inside pocket of my jacket and walked after her. She had long blonde hair, all the way down her back. And she was almost as tall as I was at six foot one. If I didn't know from her birth certificate that she was only thirteen, I wouldn't think it. She was fully developed, and from what her teachers had said about her, she didn't act 13 either. I'd read some of her work. She could write like a college professor if she really tried. Good vocabulary, excellent imagination, and a seriousness about her.

She wasn't social. Most people didn't know what to think of her. She hung out with the outcasts in the rare times that she wasn't alone. She preferred to be alone. Left to herself and to her writing, her imagination ran wild. I'd read her work. Her books, her diaries. She was down to earth. No crushes to speak of or gossip to talk about. She used her writing to escape, I could tell, from the pressures at home. 

She had two parents, but they both worked. She watched her four younger brothers and one sister a lot. She never went out, except occasionally with Maygan to the movies. But other than that, she kept completely to herself. Maybe that's what K liked about her. She was just like him.

I followed at a distance as she walked out onto the main road. I knew her path. This wasn't the first time I'd followed her. And I didn't intend to talk to her yet. Her parents weren't home, and she'd go to an empty house. There, I would talk to her. Not out on the street. But I was going to follow her, closely enough to give her the wrong impression, make her nervous. It would be easier to talk to her that way.

She turned into her subdivision and I followed. I had lost sight of her, but I knew where she was. She only walked in this direction a few steps, then turned onto another road. I followed blindly, considering what I was going to say. Then, all of a sudden, she was standing in front of me, out of nowhere. I jumped back, startled.

"Why are you following me?" she demanded.

It took me a minute to figure out where she'd come from. She'd been behind a tree, about a foot away from the sidewalk. "I..." I stammered, stunned by the unexpected confrontation.

"Who are you?" she continued. "And what do you want?"

I could lie to her, but that wouldn't get me anywhere. I was trailing her, and she knew it. But I decided not to answer the first of her two questions. Not yet, anyway. "I wanted to talk to you," I told her. "But not in public."

"Stalking is against the law," she informed me.

"So is hacking," I shot back.

She stared at me, with ice cold blue-green eyes. No shock, just a defiant glare. "Why would you say something like that?"

"Ever hear of Majestic 12?"

She froze, a look of fear flooding her eyes. I smiled inwardly. Good. I had her right where I wanted her. Interest peaked, plenty shocked. She was the perfect target. "I've been following you for quite a while," I shot at her. "And _not _because I have some passionate romantic interest in you because frankly, I could care less what you do or where you live. But my boss wants to talk to you. And I'm supposed to let you know that. You can do with it what you will."

The fear turned to a look of confusion, but she said nothing. I reached into my pocket and pulled out an index card. "Here," I mumbled, handing it to her. "Call this number if you're interested."

And with that, I turned and walked away, leaving her stunned. I hoped that would be the last I saw of her, but I somehow doubted it would be. "Oh, yeah," I remembered, turning around and walking backwards, away from her. "Don't say anything to anyone about this," I called to her. "Especially Maygan."

****

SARA:

I lay on my bed, staring at the card in front of me. A scribbled, seven-digit number was written on it. Nothing else. I wasn't sure what to do with it. But I knew I couldn't just throw it away without finding out what was going on here. My damned curiosity wouldn't let me. I stared at the cordless phone on the bed, then back at the card. What if I didn't call? Would he still follow me? What did they want? Moreover, who were "they"? He'd mentioned Majestic 12, the government organization set up to investigate the paranormal. The Men In Black, as it were.

I picked up the phone, my fingers pressing each number slowly and carefully. What would I say? I got to the seventh number, but I didn't press it. Instead, I hung up. I didn't know who I was calling. He hadn't even given me a name. How was I going to explain? It might just be a prank, and probably was. I'd seen the boy around, but I'd never talked to him. I was pretty sure he went to my school. He was probably just trying to scare me and make a joke out of it. But then, I could be wrong. This could be for real. And I could get myself into even more trouble if I didn't find out what was going on.

I took a deep breath and punched the numbers into the phone quickly, then raised it to my ear. My heart beat in my chest as it rang and rang. My breathing came in shallow, nervous spurts. I lost count of how many times it rang, but I kept it to my ear for at least a full two minutes before hanging it up. In a way, I was relieved. It had to be a prank, and whoever I was calling wasn't home. I sat up, picking up the index card but leaving the phone on the bed. I walked over to the other side of the room I shared with my sister and dropped the card in the garbage.

Suddenly, the phone rang. I turned and stared at it, unsure if I wanted to answer it or not. My heart was suddenly beating a mile a minute again. I swallowed hard as it rang again. It was probably just my mom. Who else would it be? Why did I have this weird feeling in the pit of my stomach? I walked back over to the bed and sat down, staring at the phone like it was a poisonous snake I was reluctant to touch. It kept ringing. Finally, I picked it up.

"Hello?" I choked, not sure who I was hoping for it to be.

"Is this Sara?" an unfamiliar, male voice asked.

"Yes," I choked.

"I want you to stand up and walk over to your window."

I brushed my hair out of my eyes as I stood up, my stomach twisting in knots. "What am I looking for?" I asked as I peeked through the blinds. But I knew as soon as I looked out. A black Cadillac sat parked in the driveway. A man in a black suit and dark glasses was leaning against the driver's side door, a cell phone in his hand. He was looking right at me.

"You wanna talk?" he mumbled. "Let's talk. Otherwise, I'll leave."

I backed away from the blinds, more than a little freaked out. I dropped the phone to my side and took a few breaths. Something in me screamed that I should call the cops. But at the same time, I knew I couldn't do that. I didn't know why, but there was something here that I couldn't betray. Just a gut instinct that this guy wasn't dangerous. I walked to the door, knowing I was crazy, and rested my hand on the gold knob. Then I turned and walked back to my room. I grabbed my micro-tape recorder off of the desk and shoved a tape in it. I hurried back to the living room and set it on the bookshelf, out of sight but facing the open room. Then, with that tiny bit of reassurance, I opened the door.

From this angle, I saw that the man wasn't alone. The boy I had talked to earlier was with him, also dressed in a black suit and sitting on the hood of the car. They both looked at me as I stood in the door. I took a deep breath, finding some hidden boldness. "What can I do for you gentlemen?" I asked.

The older man, he had to be in his late forties at least, pushed off of the car and took a step up the sidewalk to my porch. The younger slid off the hood of the car and followed. I tensed slightly as the man stepped up onto the porch. "Sara, right?" he smiled. He held out his hand and I shook it. "We have a job opportunity for you that we'd like to talk to you about if we could come in?"

"Tell me who you are first," I demanded.

He smiled. "Of course." He placed his hand on his chest. "I'm Agent K, and this," he gestured to the boy, "is Agent J."

"J" saluted loosely with two fingers to the side of his forehead. I stared at him. He was actually kind of cute when he wasn't talking. Being stalked was a major turn-off to me. Physically, though, he caught my attention. He had dark hair, kind of wavy but not curly. His skin was dark, too, like he was tanned. And his brown eyes were deep, almost sad. I could tell, even through the suit, that he was built, but not ridiculously so. I didn't like the bodybuilder/steroid look. He was clean-shaven, tall, and maybe a little older than I'd first thought. He looked about seventeen, up close.

The other man was at least 45. He, too, had dark, slightly graying hair, though not as dark as his partner's. He was also clean-shaven, about 5'10. His glasses covered his eyes. He reminded me of a lawyer, with the way he carried himself.

"Agent," I repeated his words. "You FBI or something?"

He laughed under his breath and raised his hand to pull the glasses off of his face. "No, Sara, we belong to an organization that you may recognize as the Majestic 12." I felt my stomach turn, half in fear, half in excitement. "Otherwise known as the Men In Black."

I laughed out loud. "You're kidding, right?" I chuckled.

The man shook his head. "No," he answered plainly. I looked to the boy. He shrugged, but said nothing. He wasn't smiling though. 

I looked back at the man and the smile fell from my face as I studied his. "You're serious," I realized.

"May we come in?"


	3. Chapter Two

****

CHAPTER TWO

AGENT K:

"She took that well," J mumbled as I shoved the key into the ignition.

"Well, she didn't have much of a choice."

"What do you mean?"

I looked behind me as I pulled out of her driveway. "What's she going to say? She doesn't believe us? It isn't like we told her anything she didn't suspect already."

"You really plan on hiring her, don't you?" he asked.

"If I didn't, I wouldn't have just told her the entire history of our organization. It's not like the movies, J. I can't just flash a light at her and make her forget it all."

"What if she refuses the job?"

"She won't refuse."

"How do you know that?"

"Adventure, excitement, adrenaline. It's all the stuff she writes about. What she'd give her life to have. She's hooked whether she wants to be or not."

We pulled away from the house slowly. "So what happens now?" he asked. "Assuming she hires in. What do you do with her when she signs the paper? You didn't say anything to her about leaving her family to come live at HQ. And she _is _only thirteen."

"I don't want her to leave her family. I need her in the school."

He looked at me. "Why?"

I sighed, not sure I wanted to tell him this yet. "Oh, no, K, spill it," he shot at me, realizing I knew something he didn't. "What do you know?"

I sighed. He'd find out sooner or later anyway. "Most people who work within MIB believe that our work is to establish contact with other civilizations and study their technology," I explained hesitantly. "And in fact, that _is_ mostly what we base our operations on. But we've recently taken a step up when we were contacted by a race that asked us to protect one of their own."

He turned and stared at me. "Huh? You mean they're actually _here_? On Earth?"

"Only a few of them," I answered, ignoring his shock. "_Very _few. Most of them have no interest in Earth. And I think that's why we were chosen to take care of this girl."

"What girl?" he demanded. "Who is she?"

"She's a princess. Her civilization is in war and it doesn't look like they're going to win. They're going to try to smuggle a few key people out and, when this is all over in, oh, I don't know, ten or twenty years? they hope to get these people back together. Re-establish everything, if that makes sense. So they're scattering them all over the galaxy in the hopes that even if some of them are found and killed..."

"Isn't that, like, a little dangerous?" he interrupted.

"For us, yes."

"Then why are we doing it?"

I sighed. "Think about it, J. We've been trying to establish friendly relations with these civilizations since the 1950s. This is a chance to be the good guy."

"And what does that accomplish? Are we setting out a welcome mat for them?"

I stared at the road. "In a way, yes."

He sighed and turned to look out the window. "I'm all for studying their technology, K, you know that. And going to their planets, hey, no problem. But I'm not so crazy about getting in the middle of inter-galactic wars that are being fought by races so much more powerful than we are. And I'm not thrilled about even the so-call 'nice' aliens walking around on Earth."

"Why?" I questioned. I wasn't necessarily disagreeing with him. But I was curious as to his thought process. "Why does it hurt to have allies?"

"I like humans, K, but some of them are a lot like a disease. They steal, rape, kill... And I think every civilization has those people. We deal with it amongst ourselves, but how are we supposed to deal with an alien who does that if they're ten times more powerful than we are?"

"Don't look at it as powerful and weak," I warned.

"And as for having allies," he continued, ignoring me, "if we keep our noses in our own business, why do we need them? You said yourself that nobody really has any interest in Earth. So it's not like we're likely to face a hostile takeover or anything and I don't think..."

"She'll be here in two days," I interrupted.

J stopped talking. For a long time, it was silent. "So you're hiring this girl to be a bodyguard?" he finally asked.

"At first, yes. But she's going to have some firsthand experience in dealing with other cultures just in knowing this girl. That could come in very handy later."

"So you plan to make her full time?"

I nodded, considering the thought. "Eventually."

****

SARA:

I stepped out the front door into the cool morning air and saw him almost immediately, leaning against the stop sign at the corner with his hands in his pockets. I shut the door behind me and walked over to him. He didn't look thrilled to be standing on the street corner at six in the morning. "Had time to think?" he questioned as I approached.

"Yeah," I answered.

"And do I need to take you to headquarters?"

"That depends."

"On?"

"I've seen the movie..."

He laughed. "The movie was bullshit, Sara. We had nothing to do with it."

"But is _any_ of it true?"

"What? That there's a galaxy on our planet inside of a marble? No, that's a little far-fetched."

"That's not what I meant."

"Well, what do you mean?"

I sighed. "I mean the part about leaving everything. Severing all human contact."

"It can be," he answered. "Not what they have in mind for you though."

"What _do _they have in mind?"

He stared straight ahead, as if he were ignoring me. "I can't tell you specifics until I get some kind of an answer."

"Then my unofficial answer is yes."

"Unofficial?"

"Nothing's official until I sign on the dotted line, is it?" I challenged.

He sighed and turned away. I followed after him, saying nothing. The silence was deafening. "How long have you been with them?" I finally asked.

"A long time," he answered coldly. His voice was monotone, void of emotion.

"Well, it couldn't have been too long," I laughed. "How old are you?"

"I don't know."

I laughed. "What do you mean, you don't know?"

"Nineteen."

I raised my eyebrows. He looked quite a bit younger than that. Even though he was tall, his face just looked younger. "Do you live... with MIB?" I struggled, looking for something to talk about.

"Yes."

"Ever talk to your family?"

"No."

"Why not?"

He spun around and I nearly ran into him. "Look, kid, let's get one thing straight," he snapped. "I'm not your friend and I don't want to be. It was K's bright idea to hire you and he can deal with you because I don't intend to do it. Ask him all the goddamn questions you want, but I'm just here to escort you to headquarters."

I felt anger and indignation well up inside of me. I didn't know what to say to him. He spun around again and started walking. I stayed, my feet planted. I wasn't about to go crawling after him, cowering. But he kept walking, not looking back. Finally, I turned and walked in the other direction. I'd sooner ride the bus than give him the idea that I was submitting to that.

****

MAYGAN:

"You okay?" I asked as Sara hid her face in her hands, her elbows on the desk.

"Yeah," she answered. "Just tired."

"Wanna go see a movie after school?"

She sighed. "I really can't."

"Why not?"

"Because, I have some stuff to do."

"You can do all the stuff you want after I move," I reminded her. "I only have a few days left before I'm whisked off to Florida."

She groaned. "Don't remind me."

"Seriously, what's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"I know something's up because you have that pissed off look."

She sighed. "I just... got into it with a friend of mine this morning."

"Who?" I asked, surprised. It took a lot to get Sara pissed off. But when she was, watch out.

She shook her head and took her hands down as the tardy bell rang. "You don't know him," she answered.

"Him?" I questioned, suddenly a lot more interested.

"Just an acquaintance," she answered. "Not really even a friend. We just met the other day."

"Is he cute?"

She scowled. "He's a jackass."

"Yeah, but if he's cute enough that can be forgiven."

She turned and looked at me, a smile curling her lips. "You crack me up sometimes, you know that?"

I grinned back at her. "What does he look like?"

She turned away again. "It doesn't matter. He's mean as hell. And I mean that seriously."

"Maybe he was just having a bad day."

"I don't think so," she sighed. "Nor do I care."

"Sara, you have a pass here," the teacher called as she closed the door.

Sara stood up, taking her bag with her and took the pass out of the teacher's hand. Then she disappeared. I didn't see her again for the rest of the day.

****

AGENT K:

"This," I scolded, "is absolutely ridiculous. And I want both of you to hear me right now. I don't give a damn if you like each other or not. You _will _get along, you _will _treat each other professionally, and you _will _work together as partners or you will _die_! This..."

They both interrupted at the same time. "I didn't do a damn thing!" Sara shot. I didn't hear what J said. He gave up and let Sara continue. "So I don't understand why the hell you come pullin' me out of class to lecture me in the parking lot!"

"Get used to it," J mumbled under his breath. I shot him a look, but he was staring at the ground and didn't even see it.

"This is _not _a game. You two are going to deal with stuff more serious, and more dangerous, than anything you ever thought existed. And both of you need to work together and support each other whether you like it or not because this isn't going to be easy." I turned my attention to Sara. "And if you can't handle that, or if you don't want to give me the right to pull you out of class or cancel your plans whenever I damn well please, then you _better _not sign that contract."

She clenched her jaw and cast her eyes to the ground, but said nothing. "You said 'partners'," J pointed out after a moment of silence.

"Yes, I did."

Sara looked up at me, a look of horror on her face. "And isn't that exactly what I said would happen?" J laughed cynically.

"Isn't what?"

"Didn't I say from the start of all this I didn't care if we took this girl in or not but I didn't want to babysit a..."

"_This girl_," I snapped, "is going to be an agent equal in rank to you in about two hours so if I were you, I'd bite my tongue."

J turned and started to leave. "Don't you walk away from me," I threatened.

"Fuck you!" he called over his shoulder, flipping me off as he continued.

I watched him go and sighed. I couldn't stop him. And I didn't really want to. He just needed some time to cool off. I turned my attention to Sara. She was staring in shock. "Okay, maybe I missed something here," she mumbled. "But is he always like this?"

I sighed. It wasn't my place to discuss J's personal problems. "Yes, for the most part, he is."

She shook her head in disbelief. "He really doesn't want me to take this job," she thought out loud.

I stared at her, saying nothing. There wasn't a whole lot for me to say, at this point.

"Frankly, I don't think I can work with him as a partner," she informed me. "And if that's what you have in mind, I'd better back out now."

I considered that. She stared back, her gaze not wavering. They hated each other. And if they didn't yet, they would in a few days. But I knew something they didn't. I'd watched both of them long enough to realize that they had a lot more in common than they thought, at least as far as their personalities. They would be good for each other, and I knew it. They thought alike, and for that reason, I had _requested _that J be partnered with her. She had an advantage over me in that respect.

That wasn't the only reason, of course. I knew it would also force J to step up and come closer to his full potential if he had to take responsibility for another, younger agent. Even if it was unofficial, since partners were supposed to watch out for each other, everyone knew that whoever had the most seniority in any partnership was, ultimately, responsible. Aside from that, pairing him with someone else would free me to train new agents. And we were going to need them if we were going to start allowing other civilizations to make pit stops on our planet.

"Don't base your decision on him," I urged her. "He's always subject to change."

She bit her lip and cast her eyes down. "I need some more time to think about it."

I shook my head. "There _is _no time, Sara. Make a decision. Now."


	4. Chapter Three

****

CHAPTER THREE

AGENT SETA:

My cell phone, a brand new gift from K, rang in the movie theater. Maygan turned to stare at me. "When did you get a cell phone?" she asked as I scrambled to shut it up.

I hurriedly pressed the button and raised it to my ear. "Hello?" I whispered.

"K wants you at HQ," J answered coldly. "Now."

"How am I supposed to...?"

But the phone was dead. He'd hung up on me. I clenched my teeth in anger and put the phone back in my pocket. "I have to go," I told her as I stood up.

"Where?"

"Family emergency. I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

"But..." she protested as I walked away.

I walked out of the theater, the bright light glaring in my eyes. I was sure I could _remember _how to get to headquarters, it was just a matter of _getting_ there. I walked over to the bike rack, where my bike was chained, and unlocked it. It was only about three miles away. I wasn't about to call J and beg him to come pick me up. I'd get there myself.

I pedaled fast, and it only took me a few minutes to get to the store. I left my bike in front of it and walked through the front doors. The woman at the front desk smiled at me. "Hey Seta," she greeted. "You remember how to get down?"

"1689, right?" I checked.

"Yep, 1689 and your personal identification number."

I nodded and walked past the desk to the back of what appeared to be no more than a dry cleaners. A tiny keypad was on the wall. I pressed the four numbers and entered my social security number. The elevator opened and I stepped inside. There was a blank pad on the inside of the elevator, and I pressed my thumb to it, proving that yes, I was who I said I was and I did have permission to go down.

I was still kind of in shock at how James Bond this whole thing was. It was like something out of a movie. They had nothing to worry about as far as security went. Nobody would believe me if I tried to _prove _this. Except maybe for Maygan. But I wasn't about to share this with her. Especially since she was moving in a few days and I would probably never see her again anyway. 

When I walked into K's office, the first thing I saw was J. He glared at me and I smiled back, taking the opportunity to mock him. Next I saw K, and noticed a figure in a chair. I felt my eyes grow wide as I studied... it. I guessed it was female because it had breasts. And in most respects, she looked almost human. Her eyes were slightly bigger, but I suppose that her whole face looked rather disproportional because she had no hair. And her skin was a dark gray. She was wearing an outfit that looked like little more than a tight sheet wrapped around her breasts that was tied more loosely around her waist. It was all one piece, no visible seams, and was made out of a sheer, glittering gold material unlike anything I'd ever seen. It was very see-through, and she wore nothing underneath it.

"Seta, I want you to meet Zuri," K introduced, leaning back against his desk. Zuri rose to her feet and bowed low. A simple handshake would've worked for me. "Zuri is going to be staying with us for a while," he continued. "She's from one of the moons around the planet Caara."

"Where's that?" I asked.

"About four hundred light years away," J answered.

"Was I _asking_ you?" I snapped at him.

K sighed loudly and shot me a warning look. I shut up. "Zuri is the heir to the throne on her home base," he informed me. I raised my eyebrows. A princess? What was she doing here? "And I think both of you could learn a lot from her. I want you to teach her about our culture, too. Seta, I'm going to leave it to you to get her some less noticeable clothing. And I want both of you to work together to help her fit in. She's likely to be here for a while, and I want her life to be as normal as possible."

"Is she going to be staying here?" I questioned. "Or getting her own place?"

Zuri laughed. I turned to look at her, shocked. "Sure, you could get me my own place. I would not mind." Her voice was _beautiful_. She reminded me of Mariah Carey, but she wasn't singing, she was just _talking_.

K smiled. "By the way we measure time, Zuri is about fifteen years old. Luckily, her planet holds about the same technological advancement, and the same value systems as we do here. Most of them, anyway. She's had what we would consider to be a traditional, public schooling education, although she may be a little behind. She should fit into ninth grade, and that's where we intend to place her."

I glanced at J and saw him watching K. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but was waiting for me to leave. K reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. He handed it to me. "Take this and take her to the mall," he instructed. I glanced at it. It was a credit card. With _my _name on it!

"Is this...?" I questioned.

"It's real," he assured me. "And we'll pay whatever you spend."

There was a knock on the open door and I turned to see a woman in a black skirt with a white shirt and tie step into the room. K nodded at her as she hung a pair of black slacks and a white, man's dress shirt on a hook on the wall. "Thanks D."

She nodded and turned away, catching J's eye. She smiled and winked, then left the room. I glanced back at J, curious. A romantic interest? But he turned the other way, hiding his face from me. "You can change into that," K directed Zuri, nodding at the clothes. "It'll work for right now at least." He turned his attention to me and J. "And as for you two, I want you to be really careful. Her civilization was like ours in a lot of ways but there's still a lot she needs to learn about what we consider appropriate and the way we..."

Movement I saw out of the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned and stared in shock as the thin robe that had been covering Zuri fell to the floor and she stepped out of it. K stopped in mid-sentence and I saw him hide a smile behind his hand. She took the shirt off of the hanger and stared at it. Then she looked to us. "Oh, I'm sorry," she apologized. "I didn't mean to interrupt you. Please continue."

I knew my jaw was hanging open and I tried to close it. I turned to see J's reaction, but he was turned away, seemingly disinterested. I didn't know how he could do that. She had a body that any woman on Earth would be envious of. She turned the shirt over and looked at us again. I saw the skin over her whole body change color slightly, getting lighter and taking a gold tint to it. "I am not quite sure how you wear this," she confessed, obviously embarrassed more at her naiveté than the fact that she was standing in a room with two men, completely naked.

I glanced again at K and then proceeded over to her. I unfastened the buttons, trying to stand between her and the open door, and helped her put her arms through the sleeves. Then I buttoned the bottom and let her do the rest. I showed her how to put her legs into the pants and she complied. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror on the wall and then turned to look at me. "How do you breathe in such a thing?" she questioned.

I had to smile. She didn't even have the top button fastened. "We're used to it," I answered, not sure what else to say to her.

****

AGENT J:

Seta and Zuri left. K turned his attention to me. "I want you to go with them," he instructed.

I sighed. "And _tell _me that that's not babysitting."

"It is. But you're babysitting Zuri, not Seta."

"If Seta's an agent, shouldn't _she_ be able to babysit Zuri?" I challenged.

He sighed. "I need to teach Seta how to drive before I hand her the keys to a car. That means you're going to be chaperoning her for a while. And I need to teach her how to use a gun before I give her one."

I studied him carefully. "I don't carry a gun, K."

"No, but you know how to use one. And I _want_ you to start carrying one."

I raised my eyebrows. "Do you have any idea what's going to happen if I get pulled over or something and I have a concealed weapon from another _planet _in my jacket?"

"Don't get pulled over," he smiled.

There was a moment of silence as I contemplated what he was saying. I'd never needed to carry a weapon before. "Do you really think it's going to come to that?" I questioned.

"If it does, I don't want my agents to be unprepared."

"You didn't answer my question."

He stared at me, but didn't answer. "Go talk to D. She'll get you a weapon and show you how it works."

"I've used a gun before, K. I know how it works."

"Not like these you haven't."

***

Deanne was at her desk, typing on her computer. She looked up as I knocked on the door. "Hey, baby, how's it goin'?"

"It's going," I answered coldly.

She leaned back and put her long, bare legs up on the desk, her high heel black shoes hanging off her feet. "K told me to come get a weapon from you."

She smiled seductively, chewing on the top of her pen. "What kind of weapon?" she asked.

"A gun."

"What kind?"

"He didn't say. I'm assuming one that didn't originate from Earth by the way he was talking."

Sarcasm. She didn't catch it. She uncrossed her legs and dropped them to the floor. Then she stood up and walked over to me, her heels clicking on the white tile. She stopped inches away and smiled. "Follow me."

I trailed behind her as she walked down the long, white corridor. She turned and pressed her thumb to a panel on the wall and the door opened. I knew what the room was. It was where we kept all of the things both we and other civilizations had made by utilizing advanced technology. I didn't know what the majority of it was for. It wasn't my department, it was Deanne's.

Agent D was not easily categorized within MIB. The love/hate relationship that most people developed for each other, since we all worked pretty closely at some point or another, didn't apply to her. Nobody hated her, really. But nobody really loved her, either, except for presumably me. Rumors had circulated for months about our relationship. They were only half-true. Our "dating" was in no way exclusive. She was very social, even though she knew better, and was out frequently sleeping with whomever she could get her hands on. She'd slept with nearly every guy in the city between the ages of 16 and 27. Except for me. That was by my choosing, and not something she understood.

I didn't _need _her. And actually, physical relationships between agents were against the rules. But out in public, having her to hang on my arm or even being able to talk about her prevented me from getting into any other, perhaps more serious relationships. I kept her happy by buying her things and being the sweet, gentleman type. She kept me happy by just being alive, and allowing me to tell people I was with her. We both understood that that was how it worked, although she occasionally forgot that I wasn't looking for a sexual thrill.

She opened a cabinet and pulled out an almost normal-looking gun. It was a little smaller than anything I'd seen, but the shape was the same. "It's designed to look like a normal gun," Deanne explained. "But it's not. It fires an electric pulse. Invisible, of course, not like a bolt of lightning." She approached me and slipped the gun into my hand. "The electricity isn't what hurts, it's more the force of the blow." She draped her arm over my neck, running her fingers through my hair, her other hand still holding the gun in mine. "You think you can handle that?" she whispered.

"Yeah, I think so," I answered.

She let go of the gun and put both arms around my neck. I allowed her to kiss me and pulled away slowly. "Mmmm, I love that about you," she moaned.

"What?"

"The way you kiss."

I tensed and ducked out of her grasp. "I've gotta go," I informed her as I walked away.

"Be careful out there, Joshua," she called after me.

I sighed. I _really _wished she wouldn't call me by my real name here. But no matter how many times I told her, she reveled in the fact that she'd gotten me to tell her something I didn't tell other people. Of course, I was drunk at the time, but that didn't matter to her. I never would've told her while I was sober. The only people who knew that name were her and K. Not even Delta knew it. And I didn't want him to. I didn't want anyone to, really. I didn't cherish the thought of who I had been before I'd hired in with MIB.

****

SETA:

"So you live still with your parents?" Zuri questioned, seemingly shocked.

"Yes," I answered. "I'm only 13."

"Really? You do not act 13."

"Yeah, I get that a lot."

"How long does one live with their mother and father here?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. It depends, really. Usually at least until they're 18. But sometimes kids run away or they stay with their parents through college."

"How long is college?"

"It depends on what you want to do. Usually four years, though."

"And that is after school is finished?"  
"Yeah. So until they're 22. But not everyone goes to college. And not every college student lives with their parents."

She nodded slowly. "Where I come from, all children live at their school when they are twelve. They stay there until they are... you would probably say 25 or so."

"Do they _go _to school all that time?"

"Oh, yes. It is a great privilege to go to schooling. Not all people can afford such a thing."

I nodded, interested by the differences in our cultures. "Here, kids have to go to school, like it or not."

She sighed. "I am glad that our cultures are similar, but I do not understand many things about your world. I am afraid that I will not fit in very well until I learn a great deal of things."

I smiled as I walked down the street, the sun absorbing through the black suit jacket on my shoulders. The air was cool and the sun was welcome. "Well, ask away," I invited.

She looked around her. "I know your language, but I still sound much different than you."

"What do you mean?" I questioned.

"The way that I was taught to say things is not the way you phrase them. You run words together and make new words."

"Is that hard for you to understand when I do that?" I asked. "Because I could try to not do that when I talk to you if it would help."

"Oh, no, I understand," she laughed. "I just cannot seem to run my words together, too."

"Don't worry about it," I smiled. "You'll catch on. It's just something you pick up from talking to people. The more people you talk to, the more you'll start to talk like them."

She touched her face gently, careful not to smear the thick, but natural-looking layer of makeup blended into her skin to make her less conspicuous. "I am just so fearful that I will be discovered here. I am not used to hiding. But they told me that I must hide my origin from people here, or else they would be afraid and cause many problems."

"Yeah," I agreed quietly. "I don't think the population of Earth would take too kindly to the idea of you visiting us."

She smiled. "I do not understand what their fear lies in."

"Well, humans fear the unknown," I shrugged. "They don't like what they don't understand."

"Did you used to be that way?"

I thought about it for a moment. "Yeah, I suppose at one point I was. But for the past few years, I've really been trying to find out the truth, no matter how scary it was. And I guess that's how I ended up with MIB."

She looked at me. Her steps were so graceful, she almost glided on air. "Do I scare you?" she questioned.

I smiled back at her. "No. Not yet."

"I do not wish to cause an uprising. Please help me to blend in."

"Well, first off," I grinned. "This strip show thing in front of guys is gonna have to stop."

She stared at me, confused. "Strip show?"

"I'm guessing that your people are not as modest as we are here," I grinned at her. "On Earth, we don't undress in front of other people. Especially people of the other sex."

"Why not? Is the human body something to hide?"

"Well…" I stammered, caught momentarily off-guard by her response. "Not exactly. It's just not something you share with _everybody_."

"Who is it shared with?"

I could tell I was confusing her. "Well, with one person that you love and trust."

"And then they return the gesture?"

I smiled. She wasn't stupid. Just unaware of the way we thought. I had a feeling that she would figure out more than I would actually flat-out tell her. "Yes."

She laughed. "If you are only to experience one such encounter, I suppose you would hope that the person is as beautiful as yourself."

I smiled. "You can experience it more than once, but with one person."

"Only one?"

"Well, not all people follow those rules, but it's a good rule of thumb until you figure out what you believe in these set of circumstances."

Suddenly, a black car pulled up beside us. I turned and saw J lean over the passenger seat and stare out the open window. "You two need a ride?" he questioned, his voice monotone.

Zuri looked at me and smiled. She climbed into the back seat of the Cadillac and I got in next to J. He pulled away as I slammed the door shut. "You know what?" she asked me. 

I turned to face her. "What?"

"I think you and he should experience."

J glanced at me, eyebrows raised at the inside joke. I blushed involuntarily. This girl was certainly not shy about speaking her mind.


	5. Chapter Four

****

CHAPTER FOUR

AGENT J:

It was one of the most interesting experiences of my life. Seta didn't like to shop and assumed that Zuri would show herself around and leave her to pay for it. She was fine with that. The only problem was, Zuri didn't know _how _to shop. She'd never been to a mall, or anything like it. Watching the two of them was rather comical. We walked in and out of stores, looking at things but never touching. Then, finally, Seta realized we'd walked all the way around the mall. Zuri was thrilled at how much fun she'd just had and was ready to leave. She hadn't bought a thing. I hid my smile as Seta tried to explain the concept of buying things. Then we started over.

Zuri discovered that she liked trying things on, but she rarely liked what she saw. She modeled every fashion in the mall, jeans to formal dresses to casual business. She liked evening gowns, and didn't seem to understand that those were not meant to be worn during everyday activities. I wasn't sure if that was more her culture or her position in it. She was, after all, a princess.

She tried the jeans and T-shirts look, but she didn't like that, either. I think what it came down to was that she didn't want to feel like she was wearing clothes. She kept complaining that she didn't like the way the fabric fell around her. Then she discovered spandex.

Her look became pretty simple. It varied a little, but not a whole lot. Spandex pants, short skirt, tight tank top, and a looser shirt over that. It was kind of an eighties look. I never would've thought it by the combination, but she actually looked really good. She got a jean jacket to put over the shirts she didn't want to double on, and a few pairs of shorts and capris. She wasn't a particularly flashy dresser; she didn't like the bright green and yellow look. She liked black, gold, and silver, mostly. She ventured into red for a few shirts. Seta helped her to color coordinate. I stood by and watched, not entirely sure what I was doing here.

"I don't know how crazy K's going to be about this wardrobe," I mumbled as we waited for her to emerge from a dressing room.

"What do you mean?" Seta questioned.

"Well, nothing personal against her or anything, but she's kind of a slut."

Seta glared at me. "She's not a _slut_, J. She just doesn't understand how..."

"By _our _standards, she's a slut."

"That's an awfully derogatory term to use against someone who doesn't know that she's doing anything wrong."

"Well, isn't it your job to teach her?" I challenged. "I'll tell you one thing, when she goes jackin' off the entire football team at your school because she's so damn seductive in the way she dresses and..."

"You don't know that she'll do that," Seta defended, cutting me off.

I turned to face her. "She's looking to people here to figure out how to act," I whispered harshly. "And she's dressing in a way that's going to give guys the wrong impression. They're going to _expect _her to put out, and she'll think that's what she's supposed to do because she's looking to them to figure out how to act."

"You just deal with your own issues, J," she growled. "Let me take care of Zuri."

I wanted to shoot something back at her, but I didn't have a chance before Zuri stepped out of the dressing room. "How does this look?" she questioned, spinning around.

Seta and I glared at each other. Then, all of a sudden, the mirror next to Zuri shattered into a million pieces, spraying tiny shards of glass everywhere. I knelt down and hid my face inside my jacket instinctively. Zuri screamed as the glass tinkled to the floor. I looked up and saw her staring past me, horror written all over her face. I looked behind me and saw a man with a gun aiming at her. She was just standing, frozen in place. Damn it!

"Get down!" Seta screamed at her, jumping up and tackling her to the ground. The wooden door directly behind where she'd just been standing burst into a slivers no thicker than toothpicks. 

"Call backup!" I yelled at Seta.

I turned my attention to the man. He was approaching quickly, the gun at his side. There were too many people here, all on the floor. I knew I wasn't supposed to draw attention to myself. Ever. Especially not with a gun in my hand. I was either going to answer to police or become a fugitive. Unless no one got a good look at me...

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my glasses, pressing them to my face. It wasn't much, but it would help a little bit. "J!" Seta whispered harshly. I turned and glanced at her and she tossed me a baseball cap. Smart. I could eliminate both hair and eye color from a description.

I put the cap on backwards, pulling it low. The man was only about ten feet away now. I pulled my gun and held it firmly, feeling it warm in my hand. Then I stood up and pointed it at the man. "Freeze," I ordered.

He stopped and glared at me, but said nothing. The gun remained at his side. I studied him carefully. He had long gray hair and wore glasses that distorted his eyes. He didn't have a beard, but hadn't shaved recently, either. He was wearing dirty jeans and a T-shirt with a jean-jacket over it. "Who are you?" he finally growled. His voice was more of a rumble than anything. Like a low growl in his throat.

I suddenly realized that I had no plan here. I knew better than to shoot him point blank. And I doubted that he was human. I didn't want to just hold him until the security guards got here. That would be messy. So what was I supposed to do with him now? "I'm a cop," I answered.

He laughed. "You gonna shoot me with your scary gun?" he chuckled.

I saw the muscles in his hand tighten. "Don't do it," I warned, every nerve standing on edge.

"You can't hurt me," he laughed.

He pulled the gun in front of him. With lightning quick reflexes, I shot at his hand, hoping to hit and shatter the gun. I wasn't sure if I'd succeeded. I hit the floor, knowing that he had already fired. His aim wasn't so good this time and he hit the tall shelf of jeans next to me. The support beam disintegrated and I knew what was happening, though I couldn't do anything to stop it. I saw the wall collapse on top of me and prayed that I had hit him as I felt pain surge through my body and darkness surround my mind.

****

SARA:

I stared at the food on my plate, listening to the sounds of my family. "I got to the last level on Sonic today."

"You did not. That wasn't the last level."

"Yes, it was."

"Noooo..."

"Because a friend of mine beat it before."

"You're stupid."

"Hey," my father's voice boomed. "I don't want to hear 'stupid'."

There was a brief moment of silence. "He just called me a buttkisser!" Justen cried.

"I did not," Kyle laughed.

"Yes, you did, Kyle, I heard you!" Magen chimed in.

"No I didn't," he chuckled.

"Something funny, Kyle?" my mother asked.

"No," he continued to laugh.

"Maybe you'd like to write some sentences for me," my dad suggested.

I closed my eyes and tried to block out the noise. The man had run after the display fell on J. K and a handful of other agents had shown up a few minutes later. They got Zuri out of there, and J. They both needed medical attention, her for the glass that had cut her legs to pieces (it was a good thing she was wearing a leather jacket and not facing the mirror when it broke). J was hurt in God-only-knew how many ways. They took him away, dressed as medical personnel and police officers, and I stayed behind to clean things up and get the surveillance tapes from the store. Then K drove me home, dropping me off a few doors down so that I wouldn't be seen getting out of his car. He said he thought J was fine, but I knew as well as he did that we had no idea what all was wrong with him. He was unconscious when they dragged him out of the store.

"So where were you all afternoon?" my mom questioned. I realized the question was directed at me.

"I told you I was going to the mall," I reminded her. "You said that was okay."

"You've never spent so long at the mall before."

"Well, there's a new girl at school who's trying to fit in and I was just trying to make her feel welcome."

It wasn't entirely a lie. I choked down my last few bites of food and stood up. "I think I'm going to go to bed," I mumbled.

"It's only 7:00," Mom commented.

"I know. But I'm not feeling all that hot. I'll see you tomorrow."

I put my dishes in the sink and wandered into my room, closing the door behind me. I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and stared at it for a minute before dialing K's number. It rang, but no one picked it up. Finally, I hung up and lay back on the bottom bunk of the beds I shared with my sister. Maybe he'd call me back. I closed my eyes and felt my body relax. The light was still on and I was still wearing my shoes, but I could feel my mind letting go. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

The next thing I knew, I opened my eyes to a dark room. I glanced at the clock and did a double take. It was 4:00 in the morning! I must have _really _been tired. I checked my phone for voice messages, but there were none. I stood up slowly. It was too early to go to school, but I wasn't tired. Maybe I could stop at headquarters. It was, after all, only about a half mile out of the way.

I took a quick shower and walked out into the cool morning air dressed in black slacks and a white dress shirt. I didn't wear the tie and jacket to school. My mother would kill me if she found out about that. She already had suspicions that I was attempting to cross-dress. I considered for a moment what she would think about my involvement in something she didn't believe existed or, for that matter, approve of my studying. I thought of what Maygan would say, and pushed the thought aside. Maygan would believe me, I knew.

I opened the back door with the key I'd been given, typed the numbers into the keypad to open the elevator, and pressed my thumb to the screen. A few moments later, I stepped into the bright white hallway. I made my way to K's office, not sure if he would be there or not. This place sounded just as alive now as it did in the middle of the day. I didn't know who was here and who wasn't.

K was at his desk, reading. I knocked on the open door and he looked up. "What are you doing here?" he questioned, glancing at his watch.

"How are Zuri and J?" I asked.

He set the book down. "Zuri's fine, just a little shaken. J's got a concussion and he's pretty beat up. But nothing's broken."

"Why did that happen?"

"Why did what happen?"

"Why was he after her? You can't tell me it's because she's one of a hundred different stray people sent out to all different places in the hopes of preserving a planet. Especially when that planet isn't yet destroyed. Why worry about her when there are so many others like her?"

He stared at me, saying nothing. "I know you know something we don't," I pressed. "Who was he and why does he want her so bad?"

He sighed and leaned back. "Zuri's planet has already been destroyed. But I don't want her to know that yet. She was one of two people who actually made it off the planet. The others were caught trying to escape and killed."

I stared at him. "Two people?" I questioned, trying to comprehend that. It was like considering that everyone in the world was suddenly gone except for me and him, and we were on opposite ends of the universe.

"The other person was one of her father's advisors. We don't know where he is, or have any proof that he's alive. Zuri may very well be the very last of her species."

The seriousness of his words struck me. "That being the case, they want her dead."

I thought for a moment. "Why?" I finally asked. "If she can't reproduce, what does it matter?"

"That's why Earth was chosen as her place to escape to. Chances are she _can _reproduce. Her species is enough like humans to where she could more than likely have a child with a human man. And for that matter, it wouldn't be difficult for us to breed a few test-tube babies from her seed. When she's old enough, of course."

"When will that be?" I mumbled.

"A few years at least. In that respect, they are different from us. She won't be capable of getting pregnant until she's at least 23 or 24. So it's rather important that we keep her alive until then."

I swallowed hard. "Does J know all this?"

"No. But I intend to tell him. I just found out not too long ago myself."

I ran my fingers through my hair. "Where is J?"

"Last door on the right in hall B. He's on a lot of pain meds, though. If he is conscious, he's probably not going to respond. Or remember that you were there."

"That's okay," I sighed. "I don't need him to. He'd probably just get pissed off at me anyways."

"For what?"

I shrugged. "Who knows. He'd find something."

"You really don't like him, do you?"

I looked away. "It's not that. He just… really frustrates me," I confessed. "It's like he hates me and I can't figure out if it's more because I'm younger than him and he feels he has to take responsibility for me or if it's just because I'm female. I kinda get the idea it's a little bit of both."

K said nothing. I sighed. "I'm gonna go," I mumbled.

He nodded. "Be careful out there."

I walked out of the office. The room was easy to find, and unlocked. I slipped inside quietly. It was dark, lit only by the light from an adjoining room. J was lying on a bed with white sheets.

"Hey," I called quietly. "Are you awake?"

He moaned in reply and I closed the door behind me. "How do you feel?" I asked gently.

"Dead," he answered. I smiled as I sat down on the edge of the bed. "How's Zuri?" he slurred.

"Better than you."

"That's not hard."

For once, his voice didn't have that harsh bite to it. "K says she's a little shaken up, but she's okay," I whispered.

"Why are you here?" he slurred. It wasn't a threat. He sounded curious.

"I wanted to see how you were doing."

"You didn't have to do that."

"I know, but I was worried."

I could tell he was drugged by the way he was talking. He was open to conversation, and he was being nice on top of that. "You know, you hit that guy's gun perfectly," I told him. "Don't know if anyone's told you that. But I figured that was what you were aiming at." I smiled as I remembered it. "You should've seen the look on his face. He was so shocked."

J opened his eyes and looked at me. The light reflected off of them and I felt them move over me, suddenly self-conscious. "I don't believe you that you're only 13," he informed me.

I smiled. "Well, believe it. Because it's true."

"You're too old to be 13."

I clasped my hands in my lap. "And here I thought you saw me as some annoying little sister," I reminded him.

"I thought you would be."

"But you don't now?"

He closed his eyes. "You think on your feet. I like that. You could learn things."

"So does that mean you're not going to be so mean to me anymore?" I joked.

"I'm not your friend," he repeated.

I sighed. He wasn't drugged enough to forget how mean he was. "Why do you hate me?" I questioned. "What is it that I did to make you hate me so much? It's not like I went running after this job, J. And I never meant to get in your way."

"You make me nervous," he confessed. I stared at him, shocked at his honesty, as he closed his eyes.

"What?"

"Not just you. All women do. And some men, too."

"Why?"

"Because I know how I'm supposed to act, and how they expect me to act, and I can't do it."

I thought about that for a moment. "You think I expect you to act a certain way?" I questioned.

"People expect normalcy. They don't expect me to not feel things that are normal to feel."

"Like attraction?" I questioned. "Is that what you mean?"

"Exactly."

"You don't feel attraction to women? Are you gay? Because that's just another..."

He laughed cynically. "No, I'm not gay."

I stared, confused. "You just don't feel anything?"

He sighed deeply. "I have this girlfriend. Lexi. She's Agent L, but she doesn't like being called that. I don't know what she did that got her in here but she's here. She's taught me a lot about the way women think."

"You can't stereotype women based on one experience," I defended.

"It isn't just one experience, it's a lot of them."

"You get hurt easily? In a relationship?" I realized what I'd said after I said it. I was pushing him. And I didn't want to pry. But at the same time, I knew he'd never be this honest with me again.

"I've never had a relationship," he whispered.

"You said you have a girlfriend."

"I don't sleep with her."

"So? That doesn't mean you don't have a relationship with her."

"She hates that I won't. Lots of mind games. Sometimes I think she's right."

"About what?"

"I don't love her because I won't give in."

"That's not necessarily true," I assured him.

"Not necessarily, but I think it is in this case," he slurred, tripping over his tongue. "I don't think I love her. I know I don't trust her."

"If she's only in it for the sex, I can't say I would trust her either."

He was quiet for a moment. "She doesn't know about me," he whispered. "And I don't want to tell her. She thinks it's me that she feels."

I tried to make sense of his words. "What do you mean?"

"When she kisses me. But it's not me. It's him. And so I hate it when she tells me it's so good."

I stared at him. "What do you mean it's not you?"

"Well, it _is _me," he corrected. "But it's not _because _of me. It's because of him. And I'm just doing what I'm supposed to. But she doesn't know that. And I can't tell her."

He wasn't making any sense. "You think she compares you to an old boyfriend?" I guessed. "That she doesn't realize you're not the same guy?"

He sighed. "No. Never mind. I don't want to talk about it."

I glanced at my watch. I had to get going or I was going to be late to class. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to pry." I stood up. "I've gotta get to school. I hope you feel better."

"Sara," he called as I approached the door. 

I turned and looked at him, somewhat surprised by the name he'd chosen to use. "Yeah?"

"I don't hate you," he confessed. "I just don't know you. But I'm sorry if I've been a jackass these past few days."

I smiled. "You're forgiven."

I walked out of the room knowing he probably wouldn't remember a thing he'd just told me. But at the same time, it had given me new insight. I decided to try again, from the beginning, to be nice.


	6. Chapter Five

****

CHAPTER FIVE

AGENT J:

"Did you draw these?" Zuri asked, looking over the sketches.

"Yeah," I answered. 

"All of them?"

I smiled. "Yes, every one."

She looked up at me. "Does it take a long time?"

"Not usually. It depends on what I'm drawing, really."

She set the sketches down in a neat pile. "Why do all of your women have hair?" she asked.

I was thrown by her question. "I don't know. People do things with their hair that they think looks good."

"Hmmm," she mumbled. "On my planet, women shaved their heads. It was a symbol of beauty to show off your neck and shoulders."

"Well some women have short hair, or pull longer hair back behind their heads. See?"

I showed her a few sketches, pointing out the different hairstyles. "What kind of hair do you like?" she asked.

"I don't know," I answered.

"Most of your pictures have long blond hair."

"That's because most of my drawings are of the same person and she happens to have long blond hair."

"Who is she?" Zuri asked, looking over the picture in her hands. "She is beautiful."

"Her name is Deanne," I answered.

Zuri sighed. "You confuse me."

"Why?"

"You and Seta say two different things. Her with her words and you with your drawings."

"What makes you say that?" I questioned.

"She says that people here are more modest than I. But Deanne is not modest."

I smiled. "No, Deanne is not modest."

"Is she only immodest with you?"

I considered that for a moment. "No, I don't think so."

"Then that is wrong."

"Yes."

"But you allow it?"

I shrugged. "There's nothing I can do about it. If she wants to do something wrong with her body, she can do it."

She stared at me with a puzzled look on her face. "So is it not wrong then that you are immodest with her when she is not exclusively sharing herself with you?"

Ah, so that was where the confusion lie. Seta had tried to explain love and marriage to her. "Do people marry on your planet?" I questioned.

"Yes. When they are older than I am."

"And what do they do when they get married? Is there a ceremony?"

"Yes, they are blessed and wished a happy life and lots of children."

"Do you know what a honeymoon is?"

"No."

I searched for an easy way to explain. I didn't think there was one. "Traditionally, on Earth, a honeymoon is the time when newly married people become immodest with each other for the first time. In the past century or so, they usually do that before they get married."

She stared at me. "So are you married to Deanne? Or getting married to her?"

I shook my head. She'd missed the point. "No."

There was a moment of silence. "I am afraid I do not understand."

"But I haven't been immodest with her, either."

"She has with you."

"Not exactly," I tried to explain. "This is different, to me, than honeymoon-type immodesty. This is art."

"Why is sex not art?"

She caught me off guard for a minute. "Sex is... something different altogether."

"That is what you mean by honeymoon, is it not?"

I sighed. If she knew that word, why hadn't she said it earlier when I was struggling to explain the concept? "Sex is... different. Two people being immodest with each other. They don't have to love each other, and in fact, they may not both even consent to the action. That's called rape or molestation. It can also be something that both of them want, if they really love each other, and that's called a lot of things but for the purposes of explanation, it's called making love. But art, drawing, is not either. There's no touching involved."

"You're gonna confuse the hell out of that poor girl," a voice behind me said. I turned to see Agent Seta standing in the door.

"Perhaps _you'd _like to explain it," I invited.

"Sex is when two people join bodies, the man goes inside the woman," Seta explained.

"Oh, I know that," Zuri laughed. "That is how we are too."

"Immodesty is not sex," she continued. "Normally, immodesty _leads_ to sex. And it's wrong to have sex with someone you don't love. So therefore, you don't act immodest with someone you don't love."

"But the girl in the picture is acting immodest..." Zuri protested.

"Art immodesty is like doctor immodesty. Remember when I explained that? It's different than regular immodesty because it's not about sex. It's about beauty in the case of art, and health in the case of doctors. It doesn't... turn the other person on, so to speak. It doesn't make them want sex."

Zuri nodded slowly. "I think I understand."

"Good. K wants to talk to you."

Zuri left quickly and Seta and I stared at each other for a moment. "I don't want to be the one who has to explain the concept of rape to her," she admitted.

"In all honesty, I'm surprised she doesn't understand it already. Maybe firsthand."

"Now, why would you say something like that?" she sighed.

I shrugged. "She's a really pretty girl."

"I don't think that they thought like that on her planet. If they were as turned on as we get by one another's bodies, we wouldn't have to explain modesty to her in the first place."

I looked away. She was probably right. Even if she wasn't, I didn't feel like arguing with her. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Okay," I answered. "I have a headache, but it's more annoying than painful."

She sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the stack of drawings. "Wow," she mumbled. "These are really good."

I studied her carefully, not sure how to take the compliment. "Thanks," I finally answered.

"You only draw Agent D?" she laughed quietly. "Does she know that?"

"She's the only one who will pose for me," I answered. "People don't realize it's not a sexual thing, so I don't ever ask them to pose. She asked me."

"You think she realizes it's not sexual?"

"No. But it's not that I haven't told her. And if it keeps her happy, I'm all for it."

"You don't think it'll provoke her more?"

"What do you mean?" I questioned carefully.

"I mean, I'm assuming you don't want a physical relationship or you would've done that already. But she might take it wrong that you get such a thrill out of drawing naked pictures of her."

I felt anger spark somewhere inside of me. "It's not that kind of thrill," I defended.

"I know. But does she?"

I sighed. "She should. I've told her enough times."

"You think she'd get offended if she saw this?" she asked, holding up a sketch that was not of Deanne. I tensed.

"Why should she?"

"If she sees it as something sexual, she could think that you're seeing other people too."

"Who says I'm not? And for that matter, what makes you think I'm dating Deanne?"

She smiled slightly. "I know, it's against the rules. I'm not going to say anything about it."

"You didn't answer me."

She sighed. "I came in here this morning to see how you were doing. You were pretty drugged up and we talked a little bit."

I felt my face flush red. I didn't remember talking to her. "Talked about what?" I demanded.

She shrugged. "Nothing really important. I wasn't here that long. It wasn't like I was trying to pry or anything, so when you started to talk more than... what I thought you would've wanted me to know... I left."

I studied her carefully. "Why would you think that? What did I say?"

She cut her gaze to the floor. "I didn't feel right about trying to get information out of you when you weren't all there. And even though I wasn't trying, you were telling me stuff. But it didn't make a whole lot of sense so I asked what you meant and you said you didn't want to talk about it. So I left." She looked up at me again. "That's an end-all-conversation phrase for me. When someone says they don't want to talk about it, I shut up. And it wasn't like I was trying to extract any information in the first place so it wasn't really hard."

"What did I say?" I asked, my stomach twisting in knots.

She sighed. "I don't remember exactly."

"I don't believe that."

"No, seriously. I don't." She ran her fingers through her hair. "Something about how you don't like to kiss Deanne because she doesn't understand that it's not you. Or something like that. I don't know. Like I said, I don't feel right about talking to people who are drunk or drugged about things that I don't think they'd talk to me about if they were fully aware of what they were doing."

I stared at her for a minute. She looked away. "In all honesty, I'm sorry I stayed as long as I did. I kind of feel like I violated you in some way. That's all I came here to say."

Something broke in the space between me and her. For the first time in my life, I felt respect for someone other than K. I couldn't describe it, or explain exactly why I felt it. Perhaps it was because she was apologizing for doing less than most people would feel the slightest bit guilty over. Especially since she didn't understand what I had told her. But the fact that I had said it in the first place told me that I would've explained it completely if she had pressed me for an answer. She hadn't, out of respect. The only person who had ever given me that courtesy in my whole life was K, and even he pressed for an explanation once I intrigued him.

"Thank you," I whispered.

She looked at me, seemingly shocked. "For what?"

"For not..." I struggled, "...taking advantage of me."

She smiled slightly and looked back down at the picture in her hands. "Who is she?" she asked. "Did you not finish the drawing yet or is she supposed to be without a face?"

I studied the sketch. "She doesn't have a face," I answered hesitantly. I wasn't sure I wanted to tell her this. She could easily be lying about this morning. But something told me she wasn't.

"Why not?" Seta asked.

I shrugged. "I don't know."

"Well, what's the symbolism?"

I studied her for a moment. "I don't know. What does it mean to you?"

"Well," she started. "She's otherwise a very beautiful woman. As a cynical drawing it could be that people care more about her body than they do about her face or the expression on it." She glanced up at me. "She could be crying or screaming... or bleeding, but we don't see that. We only see... what we want to see. That the rest of her body is beautiful."

That was deep. It was a hell of a lot deeper than I'd ever meant for it to be. I felt something stir inside of me as we stared at each other. It was nothing sexual, but there was a definite spark that flew between our eyes. "But the real question is," she started, looking back down at the picture, "what does it mean to you? Since you're the one who drew it."

"She's a girl..." I tried to explain. "More of a... spirit. In my dreams. She doesn't have a face, she never has."

"Does she keep it covered?"

"No, she just... doesn't have one. She's not really tangible. That's why I say she's more like a spirit."

Seta looked up at me. "Do you talk to her? In your dreams?"

Why was I _telling _her this? I'd never told _anyone _about this! "Yes."

"About what?"

"Everything," I whispered. "Anything at all. When I talk to her, it's not like I'm talking to somebody else. It's like she's a part of me, and I trust her as much as I trust myself."

"Why a woman?" Seta asked. "And why draw her nude?"

"Because she's symbolic," I answered, not thinking before I spoke.

"Of what?"

"Of the..." I caught myself, surprised at how far I'd let this conversation get. Even more surprised that I was answering without considering my words first. 

Seta stared at me for a moment, then looked away. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "You don't have to answer me, you know. I won't be offended."

I lowered my eyes to the drawing of the woman I'd made love to countless times in my dreams, the woman without a face, symbolizing the beauty and purity that I could never have. "It's a beautiful drawing," Seta whispered. She sighed. "I've had dreams like that, only not so... romantic, for lack of a better word."

"What do you mean?"

She shook her head slightly. "I don't ever see faces when I dream. I see figures, and I know that they're people, but if I recognize them it's more that I recognize their presence. And every so often, I'll dream about a child... A child I don't know."

"A young child?"

"Yeah. A little boy, three or four years old." She sighed and I noticed the distant look in her eyes. "I've been having the same dream for as long as I can remember. It used to scare me and I'd wake up screaming, thinking I _was _the child. But now I realize that it's not me. I'm just watching. And in a way, that's worse than being in his place."

"Why?" I questioned.

"Because..." she struggled. "He's... in a lot of pain. And he's crying, feeling so alone. And even though I'm not... him... I know how he feels." I stared at her, drinking in her words with amazement. "He feels alone. And violated. Like there's no end to the pain or the darkness. And there's always people who are walking past him. And sometimes the people chase each other and the one being chased hides behind him." Her voice trailed off. "Always crying..." she whispered.

"Weeping?" I asked. "Or silently?"

"Silent. But I can see inside him, too." She closed her eyes. "And his heart is just in... a million bloody fragments. And I can't figure out if I'm the only one who sees that or if I'm just the only one who cares."

"Maybe you're the only one he lets see it," I suggested.

She glanced at me and I saw tears brim her eyes. She really _did _feel for that dream. "Why me?" she whispered. "Why tell me when I can't do anything?"

"Why can't you? Have you tried?"

She cast her eyes down. "I'm too far away. And I'm not... a person. It's more like I'm an outside force looking into a crystal ball. Why wouldn't he tell the people who walk around him? Who might be able to do something?"

"Maybe because they just walk right by him. Because you're the only one who notices he's there."

She brushed the tears out of her eyes. "I don't know," she sighed, trying to regain her composure. "I know it's just a dream, but it really bothers me sometimes."

"Have you ever asked him why he's in so much pain?"

"Have you ever asked your faceless woman who she is?" she shot back. She wasn't being nasty about it, just reminding me how little I'd told her in comparison to what she'd revealed.

"I've never cared," I answered. "Who she is isn't nearly as important to me as what she does."

"And what is it that she does?"

I hesitated again. This was insane. I shouldn't be telling her all this. She could use it against me… "Teaches me."

"About what?"

"Things I forget when I wake up."

"Well, then, she's obviously not a very good teacher," Seta smiled.

"She's an excellent teacher," I replied. "She's just not real."

"Then you _choose_ to forget?"

"Yes."

She shook her head slowly. "How can you say you trust her if you don't believe in what she tells you?"

"I _do _believe what she tells me."

"Then why do you make yourself forget it?"

There was a long silence as I thought of how to answer her. "She teaches me about things that exist in her world," I tried to explain. "But I don't live in her world. So when I leave it, when I wake up, I put it aside."

"Things like what?" Seta questioned.

"Love," I answered, again without thinking. I realized that I was once again saying more than I meant to. Ordinarily, that would've terrified me. I didn't like not being in control of my thoughts, much less my tongue. Why was I talking to this girl? 

She must have sensed my uneasiness. She sighed deeply and flipped through the pictures again. "You sign all your pictures 'joshua'," she observed. "Was that your name, before you hired in here?"

"Yes," I answered, surprising myself again with my honesty. 

She nodded. "When did you come here?" she questioned. "How old were you?"

"I was really young."

"Younger than me?"

"Yes."

She smiled. "They must've loved babysitting you almost as much as you love babysitting me," she grinned.

I smiled back. "I doubt that."

There was a knock at the door and Seta turned around to see K step into the room. "How are you feeling?" he asked me.

"Okay," I answered. "I've done worse."

"The weapon was a 624 pressure gun," he informed us, "not unlike the standard issue weapon I handed you. There's no physical evidence remaining that would suggest to anyone that the man who carried it was not human. But, obviously, we know otherwise."

"What are the police saying?" Seta questioned.

"They haven't released any official statement."

"Amongst themselves?" I asked.

"There are rumors. But no one has any kind of proof of anything so they're keeping pretty quiet."

"Do we need to do any kind of official cover-up?"

He glanced around the room. "I doubt it. He looked human enough. They just want to know who this guy was after. We got Zuri out of there so fast, no one knows who the target was or why. We got the security tapes and no one noticed anything abnormal about anyone in the store. We just need to lay low for a while and give people a chance to forget about this."

"What about the press?" Seta questioned.

"What about it?"

"What are they saying?"

"Who cares," he mumbled. "Nobody knows enough to give them any dangerous information." She nodded slowly. "This does, however, bring to light the problem that you were hired to solve."

"How's that?" she questioned.

He stepped away from the door and shut it behind him. He was getting ready for a speech, I could tell. "It occurred to us a long time ago that it was likely that Earth would eventually be visited by people who are... shall we say... more than human."

I watched him carefully, feeling a slight sense of Dejavu at this conversation. "While we hope that when they _do _come to Earth, they are friendly, not all people from any given race are nice. We're bound to get the bad with the good, as you can tell by this case involving Zuri. It's not going to get any easier as time goes by."

He turned and looked straight at Seta. "You are the very first agent to be hired for the sole purpose of enforcing the set of rules that our visitors must follow." She stared at him, shocked, as he turned his attention to me. "And you, J, are going to be the first to change your job description to the same position."

He waited for a reaction. I wasn't sure what he was looking for from me. I wasn't thrilled with the whole idea of inviting aliens to our planet in the first place. "If you choose to accept," he finished. "I'm giving both of you the option to turn this down. I can tell you one thing: if you accept, I'm gonna be harder on you two than I've ever been on anybody who's ever worked for or with me. I'm gonna put you guys through hell. But by the time I'm through, you _will _be the best. And you _will _be safe. I have the confidence in you and in myself to place this planet's care in your hands."

At that, Seta's eyes got wide. She suddenly realized how serious this was. "Why?" she choked. "Why us? Why me? I mean, I'm 13 freakin' years old!"

He turned to face her. "I want to train someone who's young. I look at it this way: In forty years, when I'm long gone, I want my students to stand in my place. If I train somebody who's thirty-something, that's not going to happen. I want you two to serve as long as possible, because I intend for you to be the best. And I've gotten permission from Delta to do whatever it takes to bring you to that point. So I'm warning you right now, you are not going to like what you're going to have to go through. It'll be hard. It'll be exhausting, confusing, time-consuming, and probably at times humiliating because I'm not going to hesitate to embarrass the hell out of you if it'll help you learn something."

He glanced back and forth, giving us both a chance to protest. Neither of us said a word. "You two are going to have to learn each other inside and out and trust one another with your lives," he continued after a moment of silence. "And if you can't handle that, speak now or forever hold your peace."

There was a long period of silence as he waited for our decision. I considered his words carefully. He had given me a lot to think about and not a lot of time to do it in. "I can't drop everything and run whenever you call, K," Seta mumbled, looking away. "I mean, not unless you can flash some light at my parents and make them forget that I was ever gone. It's not that I _won't _do it. I can't."

"I understand that," he replied. "And I wouldn't expect you to. In all honesty, I want you to remain living your life just the same as you have been as far as everyone else is concerned. We want you trained as an intergalactic cop, as it were, but we also understand the importance of placing you strategically into society. We want you in the schools. The one you're going to, in particular, because that's the first place we're going to send teenagers who come here. And they need to know that you're there to keep them in line. But nobody else needs to know that. Everyone else needs to see you as just another high school kid."

I hid my face in my hands, hearing his words all too clearly. "Just how close are we to coming to that point?" I asked. "Honestly."

"What point?"

"The point where we need an agent in the local school to keep an eye on all the aliens we're sending there," I sighed. "Because frankly, until a few days ago, I hadn't heard anything at all about foreign beings on our planet."

"There are three refugees on our planet at this time. Two of them actually work for Majestic, in our New York base. The third, of course, is Zuri. But we've been contacted before about the possibility of using Earth as a safehouse. For innocent people who are in danger on their home planet."

"If they want to send these people to a safe haven," Seta mumbled. "Then you have to figure that if the people who are after them _want _them bad enough, they're going to come here. Are we really prepared to _deal _with the possibility of a superhuman species coming to Earth and demanding that we hand over a refugee that we've been asked to hide?"

He stared at her, his eyes cold. "No. We're not prepared. And that's why we hired you."

"You really think that _I _will be able to stop an alien like the one from _Independence Day_ if it decided to come here?"

He sighed. "First of all, we have _never _encountered anything like what you see in the movies. There are no tentacles or slimy skin or gigantic eyes. To the best of our knowledge, every species within our galaxy at least resembles humans more than cockroaches."

"And outside of our galaxy?" I challenged.

"They haven't come here yet. I have no reason to believe they will."

"Well, we've never laid out a welcome mat before, either."

He was silent. He raised his hands in front of him in protest. "You can tell yourself that closing the door on them would keep them from coming here, but that's not necessarily true," he mumbled. "But it _is_ true that if we chose not to do anything now to prepare, we're leaving ourselves wide open for a hostile situation in the future if they _do_ decide to pay us a visit. However uninvited they may be."

I glanced at Seta and saw her close her eyes, deep in thought. "What if we refuse?" she questioned.

K didn't answer. Seta opened her eyes and stared at him, but he said nothing. What was he supposed to say? He already knew we weren't going to refuse. He wouldn't have ever brought it up if he'd thought that we would even possibly say no. He knew me too well to not predict my reaction correctly. And even I knew, from what little I had seen, that Seta craved excitement way too much to turn this down. He'd pinned us. And I hated that he knew us so well.


	7. Chapter Six

****

CHAPTER SIX

AGENT SETA:

I spent a year and a half training under K's guidance. Almost two excruciating years of living a double life. It took some getting used to, turning my personalities on and off. One minute I was Agent Seta, the next I was Sara. It got to the point where I couldn't keep track of who was who, and I fell apart about three months into K's basic training. 

I spent a week in a semi-conscious state, oblivious to the world. By that time, J had been around enough for me to go ahead and introduce him to my parents as Joshua Hendrickson, a friend from school. And it was as that friend that he never left my side during that breakdown. I couldn't tell if it was more his concern for me or for his job, since K had ordered him to watch over me. But it at least made me realize that he didn't hate me as much as I'd thought he did. He never once made me think I was causing him any inconvenience. From that point on, we shared a shaky friendship, based more on our responsibilities as agents than our desire to be around each other.

Zuri became more accustomed to our culture, and we became closer friends. Slowly but surely, she began to mesh with our society. She was very outspoken, and perhaps that was a good thing. If nothing else, it eased the tension between me and J. She joked openly about sexual things, and he replied in kind. I came to recognize his perverted, and very sexualized sense of humor. I would have thought he was seriously flirting with Zuri, but he said the same kinds of things to me. And he never, in all of those two years, made a move on either of us. Officially, he dated Deanne. Unofficially, he remained alone. His joking helped me identify with him, helped the uneasy feeling I had around him to go away. But _nothing _could help me to deal with K.

"What the hell was that?" K demanded, pulling the blindfold off my eyes.

I sighed and looked away, lowering the fake laser gun to my side. "Sorry," I mumbled.

"Sorry?" he snapped. "You're sorry? You're gonna be a lot more sorry when you're dead. You're holding the damn gun wrong. Is that how I showed you how to hold it? You're gonna break your goddamn wrist that way."

I clenched my teeth as he showed me again how to hold the gun. It was hard to tell if I was doing it right when I couldn't see the damn thing. "It took you almost five seconds to figure out where I was at," he chastised. "You pull that shit out on the field and you're gonna get yourself killed. You've got a lot of practicing to do before tomorrow." He pressed the blindfold into my hand roughly. "I suggest you use this opportunity to your benefit."

He turned away and left me standing in the room. I felt indignation well up inside of me as tears stung my eyes. 

"He just frustrates the hell out of me!" I mumbled, pacing back and forth on the carpet. J watched calmly from the sofa. "And I don't know who else to go to. How the hell do you put up with it?"

I stopped pacing for long enough to turn and look at him. He smiled back, slightly. It was sort of sympathetic, actually. "I mean, it's not like I have anyone else to talk to," I justified. "You've worked with him for years. How do you it?"

He shrugged. "I don't know. I just learned to deal with it."

I sighed, sitting down so that I would stop pacing. "How?"

He stood up and walked behind me. I felt his hands on my shoulders and tensed. "I guess I just realized that it's nothing personal," he mumbled. "He's just like that."

He brushed my hair off of my shoulders and massaged gently. I wasn't sure whether to pull away or not. It felt good, his warm hands working through my shirt. My muscles were all sore and overworked. Regardless of whether or not I wanted to, I felt myself melting into his touch.

"You like that?" he questioned as he worked around the collar of the man's dress shirt, pressing hard into my neck. I moaned, somewhat involuntarily, and he laughed in reply. "Does it help?"

"Help what?"

"You to relax?"

I smiled faintly. He was trying to shut me up. "You don't have to try and relax me. I'll stop talking."

He was quiet for a minute. "Hey, I've got an idea," he mumbled.

"What's that?"

"How long has it been since you've been out?"

I turned and stared at him and he pulled his hands away. "Out?"

"As in socially? Out on the town."

"I've _never _done that."

"You want to?"

I shifted nervously. "I'm not the social type."

"How do you know if you never tried it?"

"I'm not comfortable around people."

He smiled. "You're comfortable around me!"

I had to grin at his confidence. "What makes you say that?"

"Will you come?" he questioned.

"You mean like a date?"

A hardened look crossed his face and he shook his head. "No, not a date. A night out."

"I'm still too young for that, remember? You're five years older than I am."

"Well, we don't actually have to go to a club or anything."

"What, are we going to go to some sit-down restaurant?" I laughed. "And you call that _not _a date?"

He sighed, and smiled. "You really _are_ difficult sometimes, you know that?"

"I know," I answered.

"Tell you what," he mumbled, vaulting over the back of the couch. I cowered, hoping he wouldn't fall on me. He landed on the floor and walked across the room. "We'll improvise." He spun and looked at me, full of energy. I could see his eyes dance in the bright light. "But you have to tell me first, what are your parents going to think if you don't come home tonight?"

I raised my eyebrows at him. "Why wouldn't I come home?"

He smiled. "Because you didn't feel like it." I studied him carefully. "Your choice," he reminded me. "I won't force you. But if you want to stay for a while, I can teach you how to have fun."

The tone of his voice was so inviting it was almost seductive. "What kind of fun?"

"The kind of fun you don't have to be social to have?" he suggested.

I had a feeling I knew what was on his mind. "I don't do sex," I informed him plainly. "Especially not with people I don't know that well."

He smiled. "I think you know me better than you think you do, chica."

I glared at him. "I don't know you well enough to sleep with you," I maintained.

He laughed. "Don't worry about it, Seta. I don't _give _sex. Even with people I _do _know that well. That's not the kind of fun I'm talking about."

"Well, what kind of fun are you...?"

"Call your parents," he urged. "Feed them some kind of line."

"I haven't decided yet if I'm staying or not."

"Better safe than sorry, chica," he smiled. "Because if you don't call them now and you decide to stay, you're not gonna want to call them later. But if you call and decide you want to go home, you can always call back."

I stared at him, not sure of his motives. "Why are you doing this?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Because when you work with K, you need balance. And you obviously haven't figured out how to _get _that balance yet."

***

I hung up the phone just as music began to blare from the speakers around the room. I knew the song immediately. Magic Carpet Ride by Steppenwolf. I'd never been particularly fond of it, but then, I'd never been much for dancing and it was definitely something to dance to. _I like to dream..._ I laughed as he undid the top botton of his shirt, danced out of his jacket, and threw it at me. I was still finding my way out of it when he pulled me to my feet. He half-twirled, half-threw me across the room and I laughed loudly, doubled over and not sure how to react. This was ridiculous. He didn't even _like _me; why did he act like this with me? Never in my life had I met someone so forward. I didn't know what to do.

He grabbed my hands locking his fingers in mine, and placed them on my hips, swaying me gently in time with the music. I looked up at him and saw him smiling. What the hell. Who was going to see me? _You don't know what we can find..._ I took his lead and began to dance on my own, unlocking our fingers and placing my hands on his shoulders. He left his hands on my waist and moved with me for a few moments before I pulled my hands away and raised them above my head, closing my eyes in surrender to the music.

_Close your eyes girl... look inside girl... let the sound take you away..._

I hadn't danced in years. And never with anyone else present. There was an excitement to it that I'd never felt before. I flipped my hair out of my eyes and glanced again at J. He smiled back and reached above me, taking my hands. He spun me around so that my back was to him and held my arms crossed over my chest as we continued to dance. I leaned into him and let him guide my movements. Suddenly, he ducked out from behind me, letting go of one of my hands, and turned me around to face him again. I laughed as our fingers got tangled together.

We danced through the song, and then stared at each other, both breathing a little heavy. He ran his fingers through his dark hair. "Not to try and peer pressure or taint or tempt you or anything weird like that, but do you drink?"

"Alcohol, you mean?"

"Yeah."

"I'm fifteen, Joshua," I reminded him.

He smiled. "I keep forgetting."

He backed out of the room. "You want anything?" he asked as he vanished into the kitchen of the apartment. "I've probably got it."

I followed behind him as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of clear-orange liquid. It was a wine cooler. My mother used to drink them many years ago. He twisted the cap off and raised it to his lips. "Anything?" he prodded, the fridge still open. "Give me a clue."

I eyed the cooler, not sure I really wanted to try it. It wasn't that I believed drinking to be any great, unforgivable sin. I just wasn't sure I wanted to try it and find I liked it, then not be able to get it. He saw my stare and held the bottle out to me. I glanced up at him. "You drink a lot?" I asked as I took it and smelled it.

"No. Hardly ever, actually. My father was an alcoholic, so I'm pretty careful."

"You ever get drunk?"

"Only at home. Alone. Never around anybody I don't trust."

"Short list?" I questioned, looking back up at him.

"You gonna try that or not?" he questioned, nodding at the bottle in my hand.

I raised it to my lips and took a small sip. It was sweet, but not sugar-sweet like soda pop. It tasted like alcohol, remotely like peaches. I lowered it and let the taste work its way through my mind. "You like?" Joshua asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, it's good."

"Well, I'm not going to lecture you about the dangers of alcohol," he informed me, taking a second cooler out of the fridge. "But I _will_ tell you this: hangovers really suck."

I smiled. "I don't think I'll need to worry about that."

He backed out of the kitchen. "Truth to tell, I don't care if you do get drunk off your ass tonight or any other night for that matter. But if you start drinking all the time..." 

He turned and looked at me. I saw a stern, serious look in his eyes. He didn't need to say a word. I nodded. "I get the message."

"My father was an alcoholic. And I don't put up with that."

Just as fast as it had appeared, the serious tone left. He turned back to the CD player. He filled the next four hours with Led Zeppelin, Will Smith, and a host of other artists whose music I had never truly appreciated until I was left to surrender to the sounds of their creations. Not once was he not smiling, and not once did I forget that I had never felt so free in all my life.

I lay on the living room floor on my back, staring up at him. He was sitting on the couch, a cooler in his hand and his shirt completely unbuttoned but still tucked in. He was staring at the wall, seemingly deep in thought. The music had changed. It was more mellow now. Somewhat familiar.

"Who sings this?" I asked.

"Richard Marx," he answered.

I closed my eyes and listened to the familiar song. I'd never really heard all of the lyrics before. _I'd give my life for one more night, Having you here to hold me tight oh please, Take me there again..._

"Have you ever been in love, J?" I asked. I didn't realize I'd said it until it was already out of my mouth.

"No."

"Not even Deanne? Ever?"

"No."

_I remember how you loved me, Time was all we had until the day we said goodbye... _

I opened my eyes again to look at him. "I don't believe that."

He glanced down at me. "Why not?"

"Because. I think everyone has fallen in love at least once."

He didn't answer. I turned on my side and propped my head on my elbow. "You have a girlfriend hurt you?" I questioned.

He shook his head and took another drink. "I never had a girlfriend _to _hurt me."

"What about Deanne?"

"What about her?"

"She's your girlfriend."

"She doesn't know me well enough to hurt me."

"And yet you say you love her?"

"I never said I loved her."

That caught me off guard. For a moment, I was quiet. "You do to her face," I justified. "Do you make it a habit to lie to her?"

He sighed. "I don't like to lie. But every once in a while I have to."

"Why don't you just break up with her?"

His eyes closed for a moment. "You ever heard the theory that if you were to remove a corrupt person from power that someone ten times worse would just take their place?"

"Yeah."

"I guess I see it as sort of the same way with Deanne. She doesn't want much except for me to buy her stuff and take her out and spend money on her once in a while. And as long as I'm officially dating her, I don't have to worry about other women."

I stared at him. "Isn't that a lot like using her?"

"Yes."

"That doesn't bother you?"

"It goes both ways."

I closed my eyes and rested my head on the floor. "Is she a jealous woman?"

"Occasionally. It's hard for her to be jealous over me when she knows she doesn't own me."

I turned onto my stomach, resting my head on my crossed arms. It was almost midnight, but I wasn't really tired. I was too wound up. And I could feel my thoughts tangling in my mind. I figured I must be a little drunk. Not like I was tripping over my tongue or anything, but my senses weren't nearly as heightened as they usually were.

I felt something brush against me and turned to see J sit down on the floor next to me. "Turn your head back," he instructed. I complied, not knowing why. He brushed my hair off my neck and touched my skin gently.

He worked his fingers underneath the collar, pressing hard against the bare skin. I moaned quietly, feeling my muscles relax under his touch. "Where did you learn to do this?" I questioned.

"I dunno. Lots of practice, I guess."

"On who?"

"Whoever," he shrugged. "It's not a sexual thing for me so it doesn't matter who I do it for."

I breathed deep as is hands rubbed away all of the tension in my neck. A few minutes later, he pulled his hands away. "Not to make this sound suggestive or anything... but of course, I know it _will _sound suggestive, regardless of how I say it..." I turned to glance at him, pulling my hair away from my eyes. "But if you want to take your shirt off, I'll rub your back."

I stared at him, not sure how to react to the suggestion. "Can't you do that through my shirt?"

He shrugged. "I guess so." He smiled. "But it takes away a lot of the effect."

I sat up and studied him carefully. His face was expressionless. "If you don't want to, that's fine. I don't want you to feel like I really want to see you with your shirt off or anything because that's not it at all."

I smiled at the nonchalant attitude of his words. Then I turned away from him and unbuttoned my shirt. He pulled it off my shoulders gently and I lay back down, my head resting on my arms again. His soft hands felt good on my skin. And even though I tried not to, I could feel my emotions reacting silently. Something stirred deep inside me as he ran his hands over my back. It was the first time in my life I'd ever really been turned on by someone.

"You say you've never been in love," I mumbled. "Is that by choice?"

He hesitated for a moment. "Not entirely."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Well," he sighed. "It is by choice, but I think that... if there is such a thing as fate and the perfect match, that if I met her it wouldn't matter what I chose to feel. I would love her whether I wanted to or not."

"You believe that?" I asked after a moment of silence.

"I have to," he whispered back, his voice suddenly quiet and sad. "It's all I have to hope for."

"That's an awfully pessimistic way of looking at things," I observed.

"Yes, but it's true."

"Why?"

He was quiet for a long time. I listened to the soft music, felt his hands on my back, waited for him to answer. "I'm not the type to fall in love."

I laughed. "If it was something anyone could avoid, it wouldn't be called falling."

"That's what I'm hoping."

We had gone full circle in the conversation and somehow I had ended up on the wrong side the second time around. I closed my eyes and relaxed as the song ended and a new one began, a low, building, sad moan drifting from the speakers. Joshua stopped cold and I could suddenly sense the tenseness in the air as a piano started, playing simple, single notes. My mind put the words to the notes, which came from the chorus. _Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you..._

J started to stand up. "I don't know how this song got on here..." he mumbled under his breath.

"No, leave it on," I pleaded, turning to look at him. "I like this song."

He glanced back and forth between me and the CD player, then finally returned to my side. _Oceans apart, day after day, and I slowly go insane... _"What's wrong with this song?" I questioned.

"Nothing," he mumbled. _I hear your voice on the line, but it doesn't stop the pain..._

I sighed. "If you don't want to talk about it, J, just say you don't want to talk about it and I'll shut up. But don't lie to me."

He was quiet. _Wherever you go, whatever you do, I will be right here waiting for you. Whatever it takes, or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you... _"I just... kind of have a history with this song."

I was quiet for a moment, trying to think of how to respond. "A sad history?"

_I hear the laughter, I taste the tears... _"It's a sad song."

"That's not what I asked."

_But I can't get near you now... _"How could a sad song have a happy history?"

"It could if you remember making love to it under the stars," I suggested.

He laughed under his breath, considering the thought. _Wherever you go... _"No," he mumbled after a moment of silence.

"So it's a sad memory?"

He hesitated. "Yes."

"A woman?" I questioned. _I wonder how we can survive this romance..._

"No, why would you think that?"

I laughed quietly. "Well, I guess just because that's usually the only reason why a love song would make somebody sad." _But in the end if I'm with you, I'll take the chance..._

"This isn't a love song."

"Yes it is."

"It's too sad to be a love song."

"So it's a tragic love song, but it's still about how much she loves him... or he loves her... that they'll wait for each other."

We listened to the words of the song for a minute. _Whatever it takes or how my heart breaks, I will be right here waiting for you... _"I don't see it that way," he finally answered.

"Why not? How do you see it?"

He was quiet for a minute. "I don't know."

"You don't _know _your opinion on something?"

"Is that so unheard of?"

"Well, it is when you've already established that you don't agree with my interpretation, so you must have your own."

He was quiet. I knew he wasn't going to say anything. It was up to me to initiate the conversation once again. "Does it have anything to do with Deanne?" I asked.

"No."

"Someone you loved, though."

"I've never loved anyone."

I laughed quietly. "Everyone has loved somebody. Even if it's only your mother."

"No," he repeated in a whisper.

"You don't love your mother?"

"I don't have a mother."

"Well you had to at some point."

"I never knew her."

"What about your father?"

"What about him?"

"You must've loved him." He didn't answer. "And I have to think you feel _something_ for Deanne..."

"I don't trust her," he answered plainly. "How can I love her when I don't trust her?"

"Well, you have to trust somebody, Joshua. Why not her?"

He didn't answer. I felt his fingers in my back again, pressing hard. "Do you love her?" I questioned. I had the distinct feeling that I'd asked that question before, but I couldn't tell for sure.

"You can't love somebody you don't trust."

I suddenly found myself being more bold than I figured was wise. "Do you sleep with her?"

"No," he answered automatically.

"Have you ever?"

I figured with that, I'd crossed the line. I was waiting for an explosion of anger. But none came. "No."

"Why not?" I pressed my luck a little further.

Again, he was silent. "Are you waiting for somebody?" I suggested.

He chuckled. "Yeah," he whispered. His voice was cynical. "But not like you think."

"Who?"

He hesitated. The quiet music filled the silence. "You remember that faceless spirit I told you about? In my dreams?" he finally asked, his voice little more than a whisper.

"Yeah."

"Her."

I considered the thought for a moment. "You think you'll ever find her?"

"No. That's the point."

"What if you do?" He didn't answer. "Do you think you would love her?" I sighed. "_Could _you love her? If she wanted you to?"

"I don't know," he answered honestly.

There was a long silence. I listened to the music hum in the background and felt swept away by a strange, blissful confusion. "You ever stand outside a crowd of people who are all standing and staring at something they find so fascinating?" he finally whispered, breaking the silence. "And you can't see what it is? And then... maybe somebody tells you. But you just don't understand what's so amazing about it. But you know, somewhere in the back of your mind, that you're the only one in the world who doesn't feel... excited by it?"

I knew what he was talking about. He didn't have to spell it out. But I wasn't sure if he realized how obvious it was. "I doubt that everyone in the world has shut you, exclusively, out."

"Maybe not," he mumbled. "Maybe I shut myself out."

"I don't know who you've been talking to, J, but you're not a freak of nature just because you don't crave sex."

His hands stopped working over me. "Who said anything about sex?"

"Well, that _is _what you're talking about, isn't it?" I questioned, turning my face to see him. "You don't understand why something that people believe was intended to be so beautiful and so desirable can cause you so many problems and leave you so wounded. You feel trapped, because you can't explain your feelings to yourself, much less to anybody else. And you want help understanding, but you know that nobody can help you."

He stared at me, a look of awe on his face. In a way, his reaction reflected my own. Had I _really _just put all those words together and psychoanalyzed him so thoroughly that I thought I could tell him what he was feeling without even knowing the facts? And when I was _drunk _besides? "Am I _really _so transparent to you?" he finally whispered. "That you can explain my emotions better than I can?"

I smiled at him, but couldn't say anything. I was dumbstruck by my own words. He sighed and looked away. "And why is it that you understand so much when I haven't explained a damn thing to you?" he mumbled. "And yet I've tried time and time again to give an explanation to Deanne, and she still doesn't get it."

I considered my words carefully before speaking them. "Can I speak freely? Even if it hurts?"

"Go ahead."

"Maybe she doesn't care. Maybe no one does and that's why you haven't ever dealt with whatever it is that haunts you."

He took that on the cheek and closed his eyes, as if he'd expected it. "Why do you care?" he finally asked.

I thought for a moment, not sure how much I wanted to tell him at this point. "You remember that dream I told you about before? With the little boy?"

"Yes."

I sat up and he retracted his hands. "I don't know if you remember, but one of the things you asked me was if I had ever questioned him about why he was so sad. I didn't answer you. The truth is that I'd never tried." I looked away. "I know, it sounds ridiculous. Like I should've done that years ago, it was so simple. But for whatever reason, the thought had never occurred to me."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"No, why was he crying?" he clarified.

I sighed deeply. "I don't know that," I whispered. "I never got a chance to ask him. I took a step toward him... and with every step I took, he looked different. He grew, and he stopped crying step by step. Got older and happier. And by the time I reached him, he was a man, smiling and laughing." I stared into J's deep eyes, searching for his reaction. "And he was you." He tensed noticeably. "And I turned away, thinking he was fine now. And I heard the crying. And when I looked back over my shoulder, the further I got away from him, the more he resembled that crying child."

J looked away, hiding his face from me. There was a long, uneasy silence as I waited for him to offer some kind of explanation. "You should have asked, even if he looked fine," he mumbled.

"I'm asking now," I whispered.

He shook his head, still turned away. "I can't tell you now," he choked.

"Then that's fine. If you don't want to tell me, I don't need to know."

He remained silent, as if he was waiting for me to pressure him further. But I said nothing. "What is it you want from me, Sara?" he finally asked.

"I _do _want to know what hurts you so much," I admitted. "But there's something a lot more important to me than hearing the gory details of whatever it is that haunts you. I don't want a patient/psychiatrist relationship. And I don't want any kind of sexual relationship, either. I want to be a friend." I got no reaction, and took a step further, placing my hand on his shoulder. "I don't think you've ever really had one."

Still, he said nothing. "And if, in the process of that, I can do anything to help you," I whispered, "then let me do that. But frankly, I don't want whatever horrible nightmares that lie in your past to affect our friendship when they come to light. So I don't want to base anything on my trying to counsel you. I just want to be a friend. If you need one." Still nothing. He was cold as stone. "Or do you still hate me?"

He glanced back at me and I saw tears in his eyes. A pained expression was written all over his face. He swallowed hard, but didn't move. There was a long, uneasy silence. "I never hated you," he finally choked.

"You told me once you didn't want to be my friend. Now I want you to rethink that."

He closed his eyes and bowed his head. "I was a real asshole, wasn't I?"

I smiled. "Yes."

He looked up at me and I searched his eyes, noticing for the first time the excruciating pain hidden there. He raised one hand and brushed my hair away from my face. His hand came to rest on my shoulder, touching my skin except for the thin band where my bra strap was. He put his other hand on my other shoulder and leaned into me, kissing my forehead gently. It wasn't romantic; it was more like a father kisses his daughter. "Thank you," he whispered. "Again."


	8. Chapter Seven

****

CHAPTER SEVEN

ZURI:

I didn't really understand the logic of Majestic's attitude toward Seta and J. They trained them to prepare for a danger that wasn't even manifest yet. In fact, I began to wonder if it ever had been a possible danger. Seta justified it by reminding me of the encounter I'd had upon first coming to Earth, but I began to wonder if that had really been what they thought it was. If someone was genuinely after me, it didn't seem that they would give up after one attempt. The police had labeled it as a freak accident, perhaps a case of mistaken identity. After two years of wondering, on edge, I began to agree with them. If nothing else, it gave me peace of mind. 

"So what did you think?" I asked Shannon of _Titanic_, which she'd just seen for the first time.

She shrugged. "It was okay."

"Just okay?" I laughed. "It was great! One of the most dramatic love stories I've ever seen."

She smiled. "I'm not much of a romantic," she informed me.

I laughed. "Bullshit! I've seen some of the stuff you've written."

"I don't write romance."

"Oh really, what do you call it?"

"I mix erotica into action/adventure. That's different from a romance novel."

I rolled my eyes. "Whatever."

"Besides, this movie had too much promotion," she mumbled. "I was sick of it long before it ever came out."

I sighed. "Would you have liked the story if you hadn't heard so much about it?" I questioned.

She thought for a moment as we walked out of the theater and into the mall. "It was a good plot," she admitted. "I'll give it that."

"You know what I don't understand?" I smiled. "I don't get how you can write stuff that's..."

Suddenly, she stopped cold, holding her hand up to silence me. I saw every muscle in her body tense all at once as her eyes darted around the eating area of the mall. I stopped and looked around. "What?" I asked.

"Something's not right," she mumbled, scanning the mall carefully. Her hand lowered slowly and went to her waist, covered by her jacket. She couldn't take the jacket off out in public because she hid her gun underneath it. I knew it was there, though. And I knew it was what she was reaching for. I suddenly realized how serious she was and tensed.

Her hand stayed ready, not yet exposing the weapon. "What is it?" I questioned.

"Something's weird," she tried to explain. "Like... I don't know. It's sort of like dejavu of some dangerous situation, only stronger. I don't know how to explain it. I just know. Something is out of place."

I looked around, scanning the crowd for any familiar faces. I saw none. Then, suddenly, something caught my eye. I saw a woman standing by the row of glass doors, leaning back against the wall and staring straight at us. She was probably six feet tall, incredibly thin, and wearing a leather jacket and a short red dress. She had on black boots that went to her knees and short, spiked, black hair. I drank in everything I could gather and looked away quickly. "Shannon," I whispered.

She turned to look at me and nodded slightly in the direction of the woman. Looking down, I could see Seta's fingers twitch over the gun, but she didn't draw it. She and the woman stared at each other. I glanced up and saw the woman smile and lick her lips slowly. She grabbed onto her wrist and circled it with her other hand, making sure I noticed her run her nails hard over her skin. I tensed and looked away, memories flooding my mind. "She's threatening us," I whispered, thinking out loud.

"How do you know?" Shannon replied.

"She's Andrian," I answered. 

"They're the ones who attacked your planet," she observed.

"Yes," I mumbled. "And that's how they communicate. Through body language and telepathy. They don't speak."

"I know. I've learned about them."

She grabbed my arm and pulled me behind her. "And if I learned correctly, they're mind readers, right?"

"Not exactly," I tried to explain. "More of spirit readers. They sense emotion, not read thoughts like you would read a book."

She started to back up, forcing me to step back, too. "There's too many people here," she whispered. "We need to get outside. Preferably out back where there are no people."

"Clench your right fist and hold onto your wrist tightly with your left hand," I instructed.

"Why?"

"To tell her you don't want to fight."

"I'd have to take my hand away from my gun in order to do that."

"That's okay, she doesn't have a gun and it would take her long enough to get here for you to grab it even if you weren't ready."

"How do you know she's not armed?"

"She _is _armed. Just not with a gun. Trust me."

The threat was, literally, that she was going to slit our wrists and make us watch the blood run. That didn't take a gun. There were plenty of other ways she could've said it if she was planning to shoot us. Shannon raised her arms in front of her, holding onto her wrist. I watched the woman's reaction. She ran her finger down the center of her throat and clenched her fist as she pulled it away. She hid her fist behind her left hand and then moved it out in front. She pointed her finger and stretched out her arm, looking straight at me. I clenched my teeth in anger.

"What did she say?" Shannon questioned.

"She was threatening me, not you."

"So tell her _you _don't want to fight."

"Doesn't matter."

"Why?"

"You know how in your society when you flip someone off, that's the strongest way you can tell them what it is you're trying to say? Either that you're mad at them or that you won't do what they say or whatever?"

"Yeah."

"Well, she just told me in the strongest way possible that she wants to see me dead."

Shannon laughed briefly. "Well, that's subtle."

"She's warning you to stay out of her way."

Seta laughed again. "Well, let's see if she understands _my_ sign language," she grinned, putting her submissive hands down. I watched her as she continued to smile and flipped the woman off with both hands. She lowered one hand and pushed her jacket aside, placing her hand on her gun to hide it. I was about two feet from the door, and I turned and pushed it open. A few seconds later, we both walked outside. 

Seta pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and dialed quickly, not taking her other hand away from her side. "J, it's me," she greeted. "I'm at Universal Mall on the east side. I was just confronted by a woman I believe to be an Andrian."

She listened to the reply. "Zuri's with me," she answered. "I wanted to get out of the mall where there's lots of people. But I'm outside now and expecting a potentially violent confrontation."

***

Our backs pressed to the brick wall, we waited. Shannon put the phone away. "Exactly how much can she get into my mind?" she questioned.

"I don't think she can read your actual thoughts."

"You don't _think_?" she snapped.

"Our brains are different, Seta. I've never seen an Andrian interact with a human. I know she can't get into _my_ thoughts enough to be able to know what I'm thinking. But she can sense fear and anger and any other emotion you can put a word to. And even some you can't. If you come up with some brilliant plan, she'll know. Not because she can hear your thinking, but because she can sense your confidence. And she'll know if you're preparing to shoot at her because of the uneasy, nervous feeling you'll get right before you pull your gun."

Shannon breathed deep and closed her eyes for a minute. "Maybe we should just run," I suggested.

"No," she answered. "I've been trained for this for the past two years. And if we don't confront them now, we'll just have to do it later. I can't guarantee that I'll be any more ready then than I am now. There's more of a chance that I'll be _less _prepared."

The glass door opened and the woman stepped out into the bright, afternoon sunlight. I tensed, nervous but not really fearful. I knew Seta was right. She was trained for this. And if I place my life in anyone's hands, it would willingly be into hers or J's.

The woman approached slowly. Seta turned to face her and suddenly tensed. "She's talking to me," she whispered. "Telepathically. But I don't understand her language."

I swallowed hard. I did. But I couldn't hear what she said to Seta. And she had to initiate a conversation with me before I could tell her that. I stepped out from behind Shannon and held up my hand, telling her to stop. I ran my hand downward in front of my face, my palm facing me, trying to communicate that Seta wouldn't understand her.

The woman smiled and I felt a sharp stab of pain behind my eye as she invaded my mind. _I am not interested in her, _she whispered in her native tongue. It had been years since I'd heard it, but I still recognized it.

"Tell me what she says," Seta ordered.

"She says she's not interested in you," I mumbled.

"Tell her that she's on my planet now, that I work for Majestic, and that if she tries anything I'm going to have to shoot her."

I had reservations about relaying that message in that order or tone. I decided to rephrase it. _We are not on Caara anymore,_ I communicated back to her._ These people are not afraid of you, and neither am I. Agent Seta is law enforcement here. If you try anything, she will retaliate._

I heard the woman's laughter echo through my mind. _What shall she do? If she should kill me, do you not think that others would come in my place? I have come prepared to die. But in the process of killing me, she would force herself to kill hundreds of others that would follow after me. _I stared at her, not sure what to say back to that. _I have studied Earth, _she continued. _The Majestic 12, as they call themselves, protect their people not from danger, but from the truth. I could make them fail at that mission with a single command. Hundreds of us lie on your borders, right outside of your atmosphere. And if you place such confidence in these law enforcement officers, you are truly an opportune target for inhibition._

_Is that a threat? _I demanded.

_Perhaps. I suppose it depends on how cooperative you are._

I took a deep breath. "She says that if you hurt her, she'll give the command to her people, hundreds of them, to come to Earth and inhabit it," I relayed to Seta.

"What?" Seta cried. "What kind of bullshit is that?"

A noise behind us made us both turn. Six Andrian men had appeared behind Seta, not bothering to disguise themselves to fit in with Earth's civilization. Their bodies and long hair were all different shades of red, their eyes a deep purple and the rings underneath them almost black. They wore no clothes, but didn't have the human-like anatomy that my people did. 

They were approaching quickly. Seta pulled her gun with lightning-quick reflexes, but they had already come too close. They knocked her hand and the shot went off into the air. I watched, horrified, as she dropped down, keeping her grip on the gun, and swept her foot along the ground, hitting the legs of one of the men. He was knocked off balance and crashed to the ground.

Seta stood back up and aimed her gun at another one of the men. The gun went off, soundless, and the man fell to the ground, curling into a fetal position. She didn't have a chance to re-aim before they were on top of her. One of them grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the gun. She turned her attention toward him and drove her knee into his groin. She turned, still held by the man she'd just attacked, and side kicked the one behind her. She wasn't fast enough and he grabbed her leg. It didn't stop her. She jumped, turning backwards in mid-air, and hit him in the side of the head with her other foot. It seemed to me like it was a reflex action, because her landing was impaired by the fact that she was still being held by her wrist. She fell, and was immediately grabbed around the neck in a headlock. Another man grabbed her free hand and the gun was wretched away.

I watched in horror as the men pinned her to the wall, stepping on her feet to hold her legs down, and holding her arms to the wall. I felt huge hands grab onto my arms, above my elbows, and cried out involuntarily as I was rendered incapable of movement. I felt anger overwhelm me. The woman smiled at me, but said nothing. Then she walked over to Seta. _Tell your friend something for me,_ she said as she stopped inches in front of Seta and reached into her pocket.

"What?" I growled, speaking out loud as well as directly to her.

She pulled out a long, thin knife from her jacket. I felt my stomach twist in knots. _Ask her if she ever considered what it would feel like to bleed to death._

"No!" I cried out as she lowered the knife and ran the thin blade slowly up the top of Seta's left hand, leaving a trail of blood. Seta cringed and tensed at the pain, but clenched her teeth and didn't utter a sound.

Suddenly, I heard the sound of a car behind us, screeching to a halt. The woman turned as J jumped out of the driver's seat of the car and pointed a gun over the top of it. "Let her go, bitch!" he ordered.

"She doesn't understand you," I yelled back.

More cars appeared. More agents emerged, pointing guns at various men. J kept his gun centered on the woman. She turned to me, dropping the knife on the ground. Blood ran from Seta's hand and dripped to the ground at a steady pace. _Tell them to leave, _she demanded.

Suddenly, surrounded by MIB agents, I found my strength again. _Go fuck yourself,_ I shot back at her.

She lunged at me in anger and I sensed more than heard J's gun go off. He stayed in place, holding the gun toward her even as she fell, but the other agents moved in. "Can you communicate with them?" J asked me.

"Only if they initiate," I answered.

"Communicate this," an agent approaching me said to one of the men holding me, pointing a gun inches away from his forehead. He gestured to the woman on the ground with his free hand, and then at the gun, then at the Andrian man. The threat was obvious to _any _species. But the man didn't care. Or maybe he didn't think the agent was serious. He let go of me, but lunged at the agent.

It was a cue they'd all been waiting for. The other four who were still standing all attacked. But it was obvious that they were no match for a dozen armed agents. It didn't take long before they were all on the ground. J remained on alert for a few seconds, as if he was waiting for an ambush. Then he lowered his gun and approached Seta. Two other agents I didn't recognize came over to me, asking if I was okay. I wasn't hurt, and I told them that. Then I walked over to Seta.

She was sitting on the ground, her head back on the brick wall and her eyes closed as J wrapped his tie tightly around her hurt hand, trying to stop the bleeding. "You okay, Seta? Stay with me, chica, don't fall asleep."

The blood had pooled around her on the ground. Her eyes remained closed and I heard her try to control her breathing. "Just relax," he urged. "We're gonna get you out of here and take care of this, okay?"

She nodded slightly and he held her hurt hand, running his hand over the side of her face. "It hurts," she whispered calmly.

"I know," he mumbled back to her. He leaned over her and kissed her cheek. "We're gonna get you back to headquarters, just hang on."

A black van pulled up and K stepped out of the front of it. He immediately began ordering agents around, telling them what to do. Then he walked over to us. "She okay?" he asked J.

"She's lost quite a bit of blood."

He looked down at her. "You with us, Seta?"

She nodded. "I'm alright," she moaned.

K turned back to J. "Take them both back to HQ, I'll be there as soon as I get this mess cleaned up."

****

AGENT J:

She moaned slightly and I turned to look at her. She shook her head slowly and raised her hand to her forehead. Her eyes opened slightly and she closed them again. "That light is so bright," she slurred.

I stood up and walked to the other side of the room. I turned the light off and returned to her side in the dark. "That better?" I asked.

"What time is it?" she questioned.

"Almost midnight."

She groaned. "What am I gonna tell my parents?" she moaned.

"It's been taken care of."

"How?"

"You remember that voiceprint ID we got from you when you started working here?"

"We used that to simulate your voice and had Deanne call your parents. You're spending the night at Zuri's house."

She sighed. "We're lucky that it's a Friday."

There was a moment of silence in the room. "Where am I?" she finally asked.

"My place," I answered.

She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. I saw her cringe in the dim light coming under the door. "Are you in pain?" I asked.

"More discomfort than pain," she mumbled.

I brushed my hand along the side of her face, running my fingers over her hair. "Anything I can do?"

"No, I'm okay."

"You sure?"

She hesitated for a moment. "Can you get me something to drink?" she questioned.

"Sure, what do you want? No alcohol though; it's a blood thinner."

"I don't care. Anything."

I left the room and returned a moment later with a glass of apple juice. She sat up as I approached and took the cup from my hand. "Anything else, your highness?" I joked.

"No, that'll be all," she smiled back, raising the glass to her lips.

She sipped the cool liquid slowly. "Do you remember what happened?" I questioned.

"Yeah."

"How much of it?"

She held the glass in her lap. "Last thing I remember is getting into the car with you and Zuri."

"You lost a lot of blood," I explained. "Rey had to do a transfusion."

"Stitches?" she asked.

"No, we thought you'd want to avoid explaining that. We used an adhesive patch we got from the Soleans. It's supposed to speed up the growth process of cells. It'll scab over and new cells will form underneath it. It'll leave a pretty prominent scar, but should be healed within twenty-four hours."

"Twenty-four hours?" she laughed. "Are you serious?"

"Does it hurt?" I questioned. "Because you're not on any painkillers right now."

"No it just... feels weird." She looked at the bandaging around her arm. "Kind of like somebody's pulling on my skin and stretching it."

"Good. That's how it's supposed to feel."

"You ever had it done?"

"Never needed to. I just know from K."

She was quiet for a moment. "What is K saying?"

"About what?"

"All of this."

"Nothing. He's avoided talking to me. I think he wants to discuss it with you first."

"Why?"

There was a knock at the front door and I stood up. "I don't know. But that's probably him right now."

I answered the door and discovered that I was right. "Hey, how are you?" I asked.

"How's Seta?" he replied. 

"She's okay. Awake and fully conscious."

"That's good," he mumbled.

I led him back into the room and he immediately turned on the light. I glanced at Seta to see her reaction. She cringed, but adapted quickly. "Hey," she greeted.

"You feeling okay?" he asked.

"A lot better than I thought I would be."

He nodded slightly. I could sense a lecture coming on. _Oh, please K, not now,_ I pleaded silently. _At least wait until she can get up and walk out._

"I just wanted to tell you," he started, "that I'm really impressed with the way you handled yourself out there."

I turned and stared at him, shocked by the compliment. Seta's eyes got wide. "Excuse me?" she questioned. "I must be having auditory hallucinations because I could've sworn you just said you were impressed with something I did."

He smiled slightly. "I know I've been really hard on you these past few years," he mumbled. "But it was the best compliment you could've given to me when you held your ground with those guys and kept Zuri safe until your backup got there. And that you called backup in the first place. I've dealt with agents before who get themselves killed because they're so damn cocky, they'll never call for help. But you did the right thing, all the way."

I continued to stare, open-mouthed, at K. "Zuri told me the way that you dealt with the woman, how you tried to avoid the confrontation until she made a direct threat. You initiated conflict by threatening back. Whether she knew what you meant or not when you flipped her off, she certainly knew the _way _you meant it."

"And that was bad," Seta concluded. "I should've avoided conflict altogether."

"And run off with your tail between your legs?" K questioned. He shook his head. "The fact that you, a human, stood up to her proved that we will not stand back and watch them take over our planet if, in fact, that's what they intend to do. You spoke for all of us. And you delivered the right message."

She was shocked into silence. "Thanks," she finally stammered.

He nodded. "You're welcome. Of course you realize the severity of her threat," he continued. "We have no reason to doubt her claim that her people would retaliate by coming here and trying to inhabit our planet. At the very least, we have to believe that they would allow people to realize that we aren't alone in this galaxy and, hence, cause us a whole new set of problems."

She nodded slowly. "So what are we going to do about it?"

"We're working on that," he mumbled. "And I'll let you know."


	9. Chapter Eight

****

Sorry this took me so long. I just read over the rest of the story and realized that somewhere along the line, I forgot what the plot was. LOL So I'm trying to fix that. Had to raise the rating, too, for language and sexual situations. No graphic stuff, tho. And there won't be. Could probably change the genre too, for all that suddenly changed in this book. LOL Anyhow. Enjoy. As I've said before, I wrote this a LONG time ago, and I'm not changing much. So there's some young-teen stuff. And oh yeah, I really WASN'T a fan of Titanic. It was just what was going on at the time that this was written, hence all the references, suggestions, and innuendoes. ;)

SARA:

My parents didn't even notice the scar. I wasn't surprised. They weren't interested enough in me, among so many kids, to pay attention to the way my hand looked. "Kyle, Justen, this bedroom is _not_ done," my dad started.

"I just did it!" Justen cried from the living room.

"There's a sock over there, you didn't make your bed like I told you to do, didn't clean up your dresser like I told you to do. I don't think you're going to go with us to the parade tomorrow."

"I wanna go!"

"Well, it's not my job," Kyle informed. "I already did all of my stuff."

"No, you didn't!"

"Well, if you would..."

"Don't argue about it," Dad interrupted. "Just do it."

"That's not my sock, those aren't my papers..." Kyle started.

"Close the door," Dad yelled from the living room.

The door slammed close and I sighed, enjoying the few moments of silence. He couldn't help it though. It only took a few minutes before he was back in the room, giving more instructions. He was like a domestic version of K. "What about all that crap underneath the bed?"

"That's not crap, it's my stuff!"

"Well, need to take care of it. That box doesn't belong there. Pencils on the floor, paper on the floor..."

"Why don't you go clean _your _room?"

At that point, he got mad. "I go off to work to make a few extra bucks, and I ask you guys to take care of a few chores and you should be old enough to do that! You're not babies anymore!"

He left again for a few minutes. "What kind of mess is your closet in?" he demanded, returning. I hid my face in my hands and leaned on the desk, getting frustrated with this game.

My phone rang, just barely audible from where it was hidden in my pocket. I kept it turned way down in the hopes that my parents wouldn't hear it if I ever got a phone call in their presence. They didn't know I had the phone, and I didn't want to have to explain it. I pulled it out quickly and answered it before it rang again. "Hello?"

"Heya, chica, look outside," J's voice answered.

I stood up and walked over to the window, peeking through the blinds. I saw a thin layer of white on the ground, more snow falling gently from the sky. I smiled. "It's snowing," I observed.

"You busy?"

"Not particularly."

"You mind the cold?"

I laughed quietly. "What did you have in mind?"

"Go for a walk?"

I considered the thought. "Okay, where should I meet you?"

"I'll be at your house in about five minutes, okay?"

"Sure."

I hung up the phone and placed it back in my pocket. I waited a few minutes, then wandered out of my room. "Hey Dad," I called. He was in the living room, in front of the TV. "Did you see that it was snowing outside?"

"That's nice," he mumbled.

Right on cue, the doorbell rang. Magen jumped up to get it and I followed her, knowing exactly who it was. Joshua was standing on the front porch in a leather jacket and jeans, so different from what I'd become accustomed to seeing him in. "Hey," I smiled. "Come on in."

He kicked the snow off of his shoes and stepped into the house. My dad turned and looked at him. "Hello, Joshua," he greeted.

"Hey, Mr. Sales. I was wondering if I could take your daughter for a walk."

"I wanna go!" Magen cried.

"Isn't it kinda late for that?" he questioned, glancing at the clock. It was almost 10:00.

"We won't go far," I promised, grabbing my jacket out of the closet.

I followed J out into the cold night air. It wasn't bitter cold yet. After all, it was only the end of October. I pulled my gloves out of my pockets anyways and put them over my hands. "I understand you have a birthday in a few days," J taunted.

"Yeah," I answered.

"So you're gonna be, what, 22?" he joked.

"Uh, no," I smiled.

He put his arm around my shoulder. "Pretty soon you're gonna be older than me."

I smiled, but said nothing. "Seriously, you're turning fifteen, right?"

"Yes."

He pulled his arm away and shook his head slowly. "You sure don't act fifteen."

"You know how many times I've heard that?" I sighed.

He turned and glanced at me. "I mean it as a compliment, you know."

"I know, but it's kind of overdone."

We walked silently for a few minutes. "I don't know, I guess I just don't get how it could possibly be a bad or annoying thing to hear how mature you are."

"You've never been through it then."

"No, I was always being beat down because I was too young. I always wanted to hurry up and get another year older."

I thought about that for a minute and sighed. "I guess, in a way, I'm like that. I think the problem is that my whole life, people have wanted to put adult responsibility on me without granting me adult privledges. So I've always been waiting for the next year in the hopes that they'll recognize that I'm not a child. Because the way it is now, my age is the only thing they have against me."

He was quiet for a minute. "Well you're obviously not talking about Majestic, so who _are _you talking about?" he finally asked.

I sighed. "My parents, mostly."

"They treat you like that?"

I shrugged. "I don't really think they _mean _to do it. They've just always put a lot on me... taking care of younger siblings, cleaning up the house..." I stared down at the ground passing under our feet and tasted the icy air in my lungs. "I'm sure it's all incredibly trivial to you, but it's always been a lot for me."

"No, it's not trivial," he protested. "To lead a normal life is stressful for most adults. I can't imagine having to live the two lives you do and not being able to hide in the safety of being a child in your normal life."

"I'm not a child," I whispered.

"I'm not saying you are," he answered. "But I am saying that you'd like to be."

I thought about that for a moment. "I'd like to be one or the other, child or adult. But not both at the same time."

"You can't tell me that you don't wish you had time to be a normal teenager," he grinned.

I shrugged. "If I had time, my parents still wouldn't let me."

"They wouldn't necessarily have to know."

"I'm not the social type anyways," I informed him. "I've never had friends. I've certainly never dated."

"By choice," he reminded me.

"Not necessarily," I protested. "I mean, not to try and make you feel sorry for me or anything, but I've never been asked on a date. I just not the type of person guys would think to take out."

I felt his eyes burn into me. "I'd date you," he finally answered. "I don't see what the hesitation is."

"You've gotten a chance to know me though. And only because you were forced to, if I remember correctly."

He fell silent. He knew I was right. He never would've given me a second thought if he hadn't been forced to accept me as a partner. We continued on in silence, neither one of us wanting to pursue that conversation.

****

JOSHUA:

I didn't realize that we had a destination until we got there. And I didn't realize that _this _destination was anywhere _near _here. My heart just about stopped when I looked up and saw where we'd ended up. I suddenly found myself standing in the middle of a thousand painful memories. 

I had never been able to figure out where this place was. Not that I'd ever gone looking for it. But being young and half-dead, I hadn't paid attention to where I was going. I had no idea what direction I had been pointed in when I finally came to this playground and layed down to die. It had seemed like so much further away than this. That I'd walked a thousand miles before falling down here. But really, we were only about two miles from headquarters.

"You okay?" Sara asked, sitting down on one of the swings.

"Yeah," I lied.

"You look uncomfortable."

I sat down next to her and looked around. The moonlight shot through the light-falling snow, casting an eerie glow over the silent schoolyard. I shuddered, more from the memories than from the cold. It looked exactly the same through the falling snow. My heart wretched in my chest as I forced myself to look at the slide I had sat on top of as a small child. It didn't look so big now. But the memories were far bigger than they had ever been since that night. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the searing pain.

__

"It's kinda cold out here." A long pause. A stinging breeze. A shiver runs up my spine and I shudder from the cold. "And it's late, too." Another pause. I close my eyes and pray that he'll go away. "Where are your parents? Aren't they going to be worried about you?"

I try to speak, but can't. My vocal chords are as frozen as the rest of my body. Death is so close I can see it looming in the distance. I turn away from the man in black and pray for it to come faster. "If you're lost I can help you get home." I feel the hot tears sting, burning even as they hit the icy air and freeze in the corners of my eyes. I was going home. I opened my eyes and saw a glow in the sky. Oh, Jesus, take me home.

"J are you alright?"

I snapped out of the trance and swallowed hard, turning my face away as I realized that I was crying. "What's the matter?" Sara whispered, sounding concerned. "Are you okay?"

I wiped my eyes roughly, hoping she hadn't seen the tears. "Yeah, I just..." I started. God, I didn't feel like lying to her. But I'd never talked to anyone about the hell I'd been through. Not even K knew all of it. He knew some; enough to get me the medical attention I'd needed at least. But I'd never actually talked to him. What he knew was purely from observation. He could've asked me. I probably would've told him. But he'd never _wanted _to know, never cared. As far as he was concerned, Joshua died that night long ago and Agent J was born and raised into the Majestic 12 "family". He didn't care about what had happened before that point, before I became J. And I had never wanted to tell him.

I had wanted to tell Deanne a few times, but just to shock her into a realization that I could never be who she wanted me to be. In a way, I wanted to disgust her in the hope that she would fall out of the love she said she'd fallen into. She was so convinced that it was my stubborn nature that kept me so distant. And there were times when I wanted nothing more than to scream the truth at her and watch her love turn to contempt. But I knew that there was also the possibility that she would just cry her sympathies and then tell me to get over it. And she could hurt me with information about my past. Just about anyone could.

I felt the icy pain stab through my heart as bitter hate resurfaced. I hadn't thought about my father in years. Not _really_, anyway. He'd always be there, in the back of my mind. And these scars would always be on my body, reminding me every time I looked in the mirror. I could never get rid of them. 

I glanced at Seta. She was watching me, a concerned expression on her face. For the first time in the year and a half that we'd been partners, I realized that had become attached to her. Not that I was head over heels in love with her, but I cared. For once in my life, I cared about someone. I had never meant to care. I knew it was dangerous. But I... loved her?

The word struck me. I didn't like it. What was love, anyway? A prelude to sex and the beginning of heartbreak. I didn't want either one. I cared, but I didn't like the word "love". It came with too many strings attached.

All else aside, I knew I could trust her. I'd never felt I could trust anyone before. Except maybe for K, and he didn't really _care _about the problems I couldn't bring myself to talk about. I knew Seta cared. And I knew she wouldn't pry at information I didn't want to give, or use what I _did _give against me. I just wasn't sure I was ready to face my own demons. And telling her the truth would force me to. But I'd lived my whole life with these secrets... 

"Joshua, what's wrong?" Sara whispered.

I swallowed hard and glanced back up at the scene around me. "You ever have a secret that just eats at you until it destroys you?" I whispered.

She was quiet for a minute. "Aside from the fact that I'm an MIB agent, no," she replied, only half-jokingly.

"A secret you've never shared with anyone," I mumbled, turning to face her. I was serious, and her smile fell. "One that you don't even like to think about yourself because it hurts too much."

She stared back at me, the snow falling lightly on her hair. "No, I haven't," she answered honestly. 

I looked away. "What about a memory... where the pain never goes away?"

She sighed and I saw a blast of white form in front of her. "When I was younger, my favorite uncle called me a bastard and a mother a whore because she wasn't married when she had me," she whispered. "I think about that every time I look at him now. But I think that's about as close as I can come to being permanently scarred by something in my past."

I took a deep breath. "If I were to tell you things," I started hesitantly, "how sure can I be that they'll never get out?"

"What kinds of things?"

"Just answer me."

"You have to answer me first so I can tell you honestly. Because if you tell me things about other people that they obviously need to know, or if you tell me things that would make me think you're suicidal or something like that, yeah, I'm going to tell someone."

I smiled faintly and shook my head, studying my gloved hands. "Things about me," I whispered, looking up at her. "Things that nobody needs to know, and nobody does."

"Why tell me?"

"Are you _ever _going to answer me?" I grinned, seeing through her game.

She smiled back. "I'm workin' on it."

"I'd tell you because you're the only one I've ever felt I could trust that I think would care."

"But why tell _anyone _if it's such a great secret?"

I considered that for a moment. It was a legitimate question, and one I had asked myself. "Because after twenty years, the pain hasn't gone away," I whispered, coming up with the answer more quickly than I would've cared to admit. "And I'm desperate enough to try anything."

She stared at me with a confused look on her face. "You're only twenty years old," she reminded me.

"It's been with me my whole life."

"How do you remember something that happened at birth?"

I couldn't help but smile. "Answer me first."

She fell silent. "Something about you that you don't want other people to know," she whispered, thinking carefully. She turned to me. "I would have to say that would be pretty safe with me."

"_Pretty _safe?"

"Very safe," she rephrased.

"_How _safe?"

"Well, I can't say that I wouldn't spill if someone put a gun to my head until I know what it is you're trying to hide."

I shook my head silently, smiling at her answer. "So what's the big secret?" she questioned after a moment of silence.

"Promise me first that you won't overreact," I mumbled.

"What would overreacting be?"

"Just... getting all bent out of shape about it. It was all a long time ago and I don't want you to cry about how sad you are that I've had to deal with it, okay?"

"I promise," she smiled.

I sighed and gathered my thoughts, wanting to put this as plainly and simply as possible. "I've been with Majestic since I was eight," I informed her. "I ran away from home then because my father used to abuse me."

She was quiet for a minute. "Did he beat you or just yell a lot?"

I laughed cynically. "Yell a lot? What are you getting at?"

She shrugged. "Well, different people consider different things to be abuse," she answered.

"What do you consider to be abuse?" I questioned.

She thought for a second. "Punishing to vent anger," she finally answered. "Usually in a non-traditional way."

"Like a barbed wire whip?" I suggested.

She turned and looked at me, shocked. "He used barbed wire on you?"

I nodded and glanced at her. "He used to fuck me too," I continued, looking away as I said it. "That's why I have such a problem with the whole sexual relationship thing."

She was silent for a long time. "I'm sorry," she finally whispered.

I shrugged, trying to be nonchalant. My heart was beating in my ears and I was having trouble breathing. I couldn't believe I'd just told her that. "Not like there's anything you could've done."

"No, but I'm sorry to see that happen to anyone," she sighed. "Especially someone I care about."

I nodded slowly and glanced at my watch. I was ready to get out of here. I didn't like this conversation one bit. Maybe this was a mistake. "We'd better get you home," I informed her. "Daddy's gonna worry."

She laughed quietly. Just like that, the conversation was over. I was relieved and surprised at the same time, that she'd just let it go so easily. "Funny, isn't it?" she grinned. "That he'd be worried about me now, when I'm sitting in a playground, as opposed to, say, yesterday when I was trying not to bleed to death."

I stood up and offered her a hand, pulling her to her feet. "Well, I guess it's all perspective," I smiled. "He thinks me to be more of a threat than aliens from outer space."

She stood up and stared at me for a minute, her hand in mine. For just a moment, time stopped. I felt an icy breeze sweep over me and run through her hair, blowing it around her face. She smiled as she brushed it away. "You know," she mumbled, "they want me to cut my hair."

"Want you to or order you to?" I questioned.

"Want me to."

I shook my head. "Don't cut your hair."

"Why?"

I took my glove off on my free hand. The cold air hit warm flesh, heightening my senses for just a moment. I raised my hand to the side of her face and ran my fingers through her hair. "Because," I mumbled. "You have beautiful hair."

She smiled and looked away. "Are you hitting on me, Joshua?" she joked.

I frowned. "Does it have to be a sexual thing to tell somebody that they're beautiful?"

"Doesn't _have_ to be, no, but it usually is."

"You're forgetting," I smiled. "I look at things from an artist's perspective."

She glanced back up at me, her eyes suddenly sad. "An artist," she repeated.

We stared at each other. My hand began to sting from the sudden cold. "Is that a bad thing?" I finally questioned.

"Don't you ever feel desensitized?" she whispered. "I mean, if nudity means so little to you sexually, doesn't that affect you when you try to make love?"

I considered that for a moment. "I don't know, Sara, I've never tried it."

"And unless I'm mistaken in my assumption, you really don't want to, either."

I lowered my hand and pulled my other hand out of hers to put my glove back on. I didn't like where this conversation was going and I was ready to end it. "Guess I'm just weird like that."

But she wasn't ready to let it lie. "Weird or desensitized?"

I stared at her. "You think that the fact that I draw women has an affect on my desire for them?"

"Doesn't it?"

I actually considered the thought for a moment. "No," I answered.

She sighed. "I just look at the fact that... and don't take this as a put-down or anything. If I'm wrong, just forget it because it's really none of my business. Just an observation that I've made. But you seem a lot more comfortable around me than you do around Deanne."

"I _am _more comfortable around you than I am around Deanne. But that's because I trust you, it has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I've drawn her portrait before."

She thought about that for a moment. "Why is it that you don't trust her?"

"She's never given me a reason to."

"And I have?"

"Yes. You have."

"You sure it's not because I'm not asking you for any kind of serious relationship?"

I laughed. "What does that have _anything _to do with art?"

She smiled slyly. "Well, it could be that the fact that she asks you to draw her and she thinks of it as a sexual thing scares you."

"Enough already, Sara," I sighed. "Forget about the drawings. How the hell did we get into this anyway?"

"She looks at it as the beginning of a sexual encounter and you realize that," she continued, ignoring me. "So it's like she's not only asking you to draw her, she's asking for sex."

"But I don't see it that way."

"But she does."

"Do you?"

The question threw her. Good. Maybe now she'd let it go. I put my arm around her shoulders in the silence that followed. "Come on," I urged, hoping that it would be the end of the conversation.

We took a few steps. "Well, I think that if either person looks at it as a sexual thing, it ends up being erotic."

I sighed, shaking my head slowly. She just couldn't let it go. "That's not what I meant," I informed her. 

Her face took on a confused expression. "What did you mean?"

I laughed at the innocent way she was dumbfounded, and sighed. If I wasn't going to get out of this conversation, I might as well at least have some fun with it. "If I drew you, would that be erotic?"

She flushed and looked away. "I don't know, I've never considered it."

"Well, consider it now."

She was quiet for a few moments. "I don't know," she mumbled. "I think the fact that I realize that you don't view it as something sexual would have a big impact on the way I felt about it."

"So it would be different, say, if you thought I was attracted to you?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

She sighed. "Look at it this way, Joshua. If we were sleeping together and you decided to draw me naked, what do you really think would be going through your head?"

I considered the thought. "Probably what I would be doing to you after I was done with the drawing."

She smiled. "My point exactly."

"But that wouldn't happen."

"What do you mean?"

"Because we're _not _sleeping together."

She laughed. "No kidding?" she smiled sarcastically.

"So then I could draw you and it wouldn't be erotic," I concluded.

She stared at me, as if she was confused. "Why, are you asking me to pose for you?" she smiled faintly.

"Maybe," I admitted.

She pulled away and stopped walking, crossing her arms over her chest. "Isn't that a little forward?"

"No, forward would be saying something like 'I think you've got a really great body and I'd love to draw you naked sometime.'"

She stared at me, smiling slyly. "I'll think about it," she finally answered.

"For how long?"

"As long as I want to!" she laughed. "Why are you in such a great hurry all of a sudden?"

I laughed and put my arm around her shoulder again, pulling her close. "I'm just kidding, Sara," I laughed. "Come on, it's getting late."


End file.
